Issues of race constitute an emerging area of inquiry in language education. Yet, race, racialisation and racism are still stigmatised topics of discussion in everyday and professional contexts in multiracial and multiethnic countries. Canada is especially an interesting context in this regard due to its official policy of multiculturalism that…

In an attempt to describe the historical origins of multilingual education in Eritrea, Horn of Africa, this paper looks at how missionaries, European colonisers, successive Ethiopian rules in Eritrea and the independence movements that fought Ethiopia defined ethnic, religious and linguistic differences of communities in the country. These…

Having been the scene of language planning for more than a century in relation to the two competing written standards of Norwegian, Norwegian language planners are now facing a new challenge: how to deal with what has been termed "domain loss" where Norwegian is perceived as losing out to English in important sectors of society,…

The learning of prestigious international languages becomes a process fraught with tensions in multilingual settings. The process of internationalisation in many universities has led to the spread of English-medium instruction (EMI), which tends to raise linguistic debates particularly in the case of bilingual institutions. However, and despite a…

Our paper discusses trends and challenges faced by Lithuanian Higher Education (HE) internationalisation policy processes in the context of European and global internationalisation tendencies. Using 2001-2011 EU mobility statistics and data from recent HE Lithuanian strategic programmes aimed at promoting the internationalisation of university…

As a result of internationalisation, many universities in northern Europe have adopted English as a medium of instruction. At the same time, recent language policies have reinforced the importance of the national language(s) in the academic domain. Parallel language use was introduced and institutionalised in order to ensure students' right…

Following Spolsky's definition of language policy, this introductory paper offers a brief reflection on the three main lines of research that are represented in this special issue regarding the relationship between internationalisation and language policies in higher education: management and planning, practices, and beliefs. In the first…

Internationalisation is a buzzword in European higher education, and many universities work hard to devise and implement strategies that will help facilitate increased transnational student mobility. In this context, English is commonly seen as the "natural" choice for university internationalisation, and English is accordingly promoted…

The end of the cold war prompted most of the former Soviet republics to face ethnic issues that had remained latent or intangible for decades. Whilst some ethnic groups were actively campaigning for their rights, some others seemed uninterested in being represented politically. The recent theory of hot and cold ethnicity has been conceived to…

More than 25% of the master's degrees in Denmark are taught using English as a medium of instruction (EMI), but not all university lecturers feel they have the appropriate academic English proficiency to meet the standard required. Based on interviews conducted at the Copenhagen Business School (CBS), this article sheds light on the…

The present article contributes to attempts to re-conceptualise the top-down perspective on language policy, by analysing the role of local and city governments' agency in language education policy making. Only few studies analyse the role of lower administrative levels in language policy, other than in implementation of governmental…

Existing research on language in South African schooling frequently draws attention to the problematic hegemony of English and the lack of access to quality education in the home language of the majority of learners, often drawing on the metaphor of a gap or a disjuncture between post-apartheid language in education policy (LiEP) and its…

In this paper, we address findings from a study conducted in a rural, Ugandan secondary school from August 2009 to May 2011 that explored the challenges and possibilities of developing language and literacy across the curriculum, including digital possibilities for the development of multilingual academic literacy. The central questions we address…

Personal, social, cultural, economic, and political factors influence the language/s used by family members in the home domain. This study examines how family language policies are planned and developed in Filipino-Malaysian families in Malaysia. The language used at home in such mixed or exogamous marriages is also influenced by the ethnicity of…

Negotiating their double identity as Mauritians and Muslims in multilingual and in multiethnic Mauritius, Mauritian Muslims have been socialised into reading and writing in Kreol in madrassahs, while they have never been exposed to Kreol literacy in mainstream education. At the point where Kreol is being introduced as an optional school subject,…