The European politics on language for immigrant integration: a multilevel comparative perspective

This PhD thesis analyzes the conceptual frames underpinning discourses on language for immigrant integration to understand their rationale, evolution and structuring effects. Analyzed from a multilevel perspective – state and sub-state level – and taking France and Catalonia as case studies, it empirically demonstrates how, under the politically-accepted rhetoric of integration, the politics of language for immigrant integration are motivated by a variety of ideological-political goals. Whereas the French politics on language for immigrant integration have built a dominant frame in terms of problematization of immigration to legitimate the adoption of language measures as a gate-keeping mechanism for immigration control, the Catalan politics on language for immigrant integration have strategically built a frame of positive representation and incorporation of immigration to seek the empathy of migrants into the Catalan nation-building project. This PhD thesis constitutes, in sum, an effort to elevate the underlying, often implicit cognitive frames that affect the language politics of immigrant integration, which have social, political, institutional and legal implications.