Multiculturalism, integration and contact amongst socio-ethnic groups in Malta

Migration has always been a way of life for islands. At the crossroads of the Mediterranean Sea, Malta was always open to regional cross-fertilisation. There is biological evidence of this contact by geneticists who observed in Malta lineages similar to those of southern Italy, North Africa and the Middle East. These links are corroborated by influences on the Maltese language, place names and surnames that vividly illustrate solid interconnections with the Arab Muslim world.peer-reviewe

Educational Provision for Refugee Youth in Australia: Left to Chance?

This paper investigates how education bureaucracies in Australia are using languages of categorisation and promoting community partnerships to construct and govern the refugee subject. We use a framework of governmentality to analyse education policies and statements emerging from two levels of government - Commonwealth and State. Drawing on web-based materials, policy statements and accounts of parliamentary debates, the paper documents the ways in which refugee education continues to be subsumed within broader education policies and programmes concerned with social justice, multiculturalism, and English language provision. Such categorisations are premised on an undifferentiated ethnoscape that ignores the significantly different learning needs and sociocultural adjustments faced by refugee students compared with migrants and international students. At the same time, educational programmes of inclusion that are concerned with utilising community organisations to deliver services and enhance their participation, point to the emergence of 'government through community partnerships'; a mode of governance increasingly associated with advanced liberal societies

Lost in Integration. Civic Integration Programs and the (New) Requirements for Host Country Language Knowledge: The Belgian Case

My objective is twofold and lies at the crossroads between public policy analysis and political theory. First, I analyze the current integration policies in place in Belgium and present an extensive overview of the (new) language requirements in the three regions: Flanders, Brussels, and Wallonia. Second, language is a very sensitive dimension of the integration process, especially when language requirements towards immigrants are mandatory, as it is often the case. I focus on language requirements and discuss some crucial concerns raised by such policies through the lens of political theory