Language analysis and assessment as a tool of European border regimes

Abstract The Special Issue “Language Analysis and Assessment (LAA) in European Border Regimes: Current Trends and Controversies” is concerned with practices of classifying and diagnostically evaluating individuals’ language production for the purpose of granting or denying access to various resources such as education, citizenship or residency in the context of asylum and migration in Europe. In this introduction to the Special Issue, we propose to understand these phenomena, which we subsume under the term “LAA,” as a bordering practice, and thus as part of increasingly complex border regimes. We start by situating LAA within its relevant sociopolitical arenas and scholarly debates. We then propose a critical perspective on LAA building on sociolinguistic critiques of LADO (Language Analysis for the Determination of Origin) and on our background in speakers’ rights activism. This background also forms the impetus for the present Special Issue containing a broad range of contributions that shed a critical light on LAA phenomena in current European border regimes from diverse disciplinary perspectives.