Everyday bordering through language requirements in multilingual cities

Border controls have recently been externalized from state borders to peoples´ everyday lives.

Most states also link language to border control by making residency, citizenship, or even entry conditional on language skills.

However, little is known on the links between everyday bordering and language requirements.The project investigates lived experiences of language-related everyday bordering in urban multilingual contexts in Sweden, a state with no language requirement, in Denmark, that has strict language requirements, and in Finland, that requires knowledge in Finnish or Swedish for citizenship.The three-year project is based on semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observation among migrants subject to language-related bordering, professionals who carry out bordering, and civil society organizations representing (linguistic) minorities.

It will be conducted by the project leader in collaboration with the Migration Institute in Finland, the Centre for Advanced Migration Studies at Copenhagen University, and the Institute of Housing and Urban Research at Uppsala University.Its main significance is: theorizing how linguistic bordering can be conceptualized and understood in relation to other forms of everyday bordering; bringing attention to bordering beyond the citizenship trajectory, thereby manifesting how everyday bordering relates to formal policies; and showing paradoxes, tensions and clashes between the monolingual bordering and lived, multilingual experiences.