Naar school of niet naar school? Praktijken, ruimtes en waarderingen van het taal- en geletterdheidsleren van volwassen migranten in Antwerpen (België)

In Flanders (Belgium), as elsewhere in Europe, competence in the dominant language, Dutch, is assigned an increasingly conditional role in policies relating to adult migrant education and integration. Language learning is therefore often a central concern for adults who arrive and build a life in Flanders. Scientific insights in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) have established language learning as a process that can take place anywhere and have often recommended a combination of learning inside and outside school. While there are indications that such a combination of learning environments is particularly relevant for language learners developing school-based literacies, not much is known about the practices and perspectives of these learners. How do they combine different learning environments, how are these environments assembled and how are they valued? Moreover, due to expanding language requirements, language learning progress, or apparent lack thereof, can significantly impact learners' lives. The question arises how learning environments of adult migrants shape their language competence and progress, and what part environments can play in facilitating or hindering learning for those who seem to stagnate. In my thesis I address such questions through ethnographic research into the language and literacy learning practices of adult migrants in the city of Antwerp (Belgium) across different environments, including school courses, out-of-school initiatives for language practice and self-directed or unintentional learning in their everyday activities. I analyze two school years of fieldwork inside and outside school, in group settings and with individual learners, through a set of transdisciplinary concepts that center around relationality. I show the complexity and limitations of formality and informality as analytical concepts and as categories discursively constructed by practitioners. Building on these insights, I highlight institutionalization as a differentiating factor between learning environments that otherwise overlap in practices and set-up. I unpack how institutionalization of Dutch learning results in processes of naturalization of competence, progress and stagnation, and in logics of individual responsibilization. These processes can cause tension between such logics and teachers' pedagogical beliefs, as well as result in barriers to school access and exclusionary practices that impede learner progress. These barriers at times result in leaners' sense of existential immobility, or a feeling of not progressing towards aspirations for their L2 selves. Furthermore, I argue for a nuanced approach to the relationship between learning inside and outside of school. While out-of-school practices are appreciated and sought out by learners, they are not easily found, nor do they automatically lead to progress. Learners highlight both the importance and the scarcity of opportunities for legitimate participation, mediation by others, and literacy strategies. While learners are often considered individually responsible for taking advantage of learning opportunities, I argue that these are firmly situated within the spaces and sociopolitical realities of the learners under consideration, which we have a shared responsibility in building.