History shows that minority languages are marginalized in many countries as a result of lack of official status and legitimization of their use in the public sphere. In the education context linguists criticize this extinction as a result of linguicism (linguistically argued racism) and linguistic genocide (Skutnabb-Kangas 2015, p. 199). They expound that the ‘parents have not chosen’ that their children learn the dominant languages at the cost of the mother tongues (ibd.) and they tend to focus especially on the speakers of these marginalized languages and their language rights which are linked to human rights in terms of the Linguistic Human Rights (cf. Skutnabb-Kangas, 2015; May, 2012). They furthermore criticize the fact that the repression of minority languages and language varieties, and the increasing pressure to both acquire the register of the school language and use it exclusively, reproduce social inequality or rather social hierarchy in mainstream schools. According to Blackledge (2000, p.27) ‘the official language or standard variety becomes the language of hegemonic institutions’. He furthermore holds that ‘hegemonic monolingualizing ideologies’ and practices (‘monolingualizing interactions’) tend to reproduce monolingualism as a symbol of national identity, e.g. ‘as a symbol of “Britishness”’ (p. 37 ff.).

History shows as well that in immigration countries, schools of community education, heritage language or complementary schools initially aim for the development of an ‘ethnic-mother tongue’ or the development of a ‘heritage language’ and a corresponding ‘ethnic identity’ of migrants. This is related to the risk of essentialization of language(s) and “the question of how to recognize language rights, while at the same time avoiding essentializing the languages, and their speakers, to which these rights might apply“ (May, 2012, p. 138).

New concepts of multilingual pedagogies distance themselves from the tendencies described above (García et al., 2013, p. 4). In particular they are to contribute to social justice: “Because languages are spoken by groups of people who are situated differently socially, attention to social justice in developing multilingual pedagogies is paramount“ (García & Flores, 2012, p. 242). With the central theme of “Social Justice through Multilingual Education“ (Skutnabb-Kangas et al., 2009), this symposium presents studies from six education systems from Europe and Canada with various types of complementary schools as research subjects. As current studies perceive these schools as “intercultural educational spaces” (see for example Ganassin in press), we submitted this symposium within the network “Social Justice and Intercultural Education”. Its major focus is dedicated to analyzing the views of the school actors, especially those of the respective teachers. Because there is a huge diversity in provision in these classes and schools and they differ greatly in organizational structure and processes, size, pedagogy and curriculum, our symposium will take this diversity into consideration as well.

The papers presented in Part II of the Symposium focus on various types of Greek-language education provided in three different sociopolitical and educational settings: In Canada (Panagiotopoulou and Rosen), Luxemburg (Kirsch, Frygana and Tsagkogeorga) and Germany (Chatzidaki). In all three cases, researchers attempt to bring to the fore the teachers’ ideologies regarding their students’ multiple linguistic resources and identities and how these ideologies are linked to the families’ expectations from the school. Finally, similarities and differences with regard to educational spaces where multilingualism is valorized and promoted will be discussed from a British perspective in a closing comment (Lytra).

Blackledge, A. (2000). Monolingual ideologies in multilingual states: Language, hegemony and social justice in Western liberal democracies. Estudios de sociolingüística: Linguas, sociedades e culturas, 1(2), 25–46. Ganassin, S. (in press). Chinese community schools in England as intercultural educational spaces: Pupils’, parents’ and teachers’ constructions of the Chinese language. In T. Jin & F. Dervin, (Eds.), Interculturality in Chinese Language Education. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmilian. García, O., Zakharia, Z. & Otcu B. (2013). Bilingual community education: Beyond Heritage Language Education and Bilingual Education in New York. In O. García, Z. Zakharia, & B. Otcu (Eds.), Bilingual community education and multilingualism: Beyond heritage languages in a global city. (pp. 3-42). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. García, O. & Flores, N. (2012). Multilingual pedagogies. In M. Martin-Jones, A. Blackledge & A. Creese (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism (pp. 232-246). New York: Routledge. May, S. (2012). Language Rights. Promoting civic multilingualism. In M. Martin-Jones, A. Blackledge & A. Creese (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism (pp. 131-142). London & New York: Routledge. Skutnabb-Kangas et al. (Eds.). (2009). Social Justice through Multilingual Education. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2015). Language Rights. In W. E. Wright, S. Boun & O. García (Eds.), The Handbook of Bilingual and Multilingual Education (pp. 185-202). Chichester/Malden/Oxford: John Wiley & Sons.