The protective role of language in global migration and mobility: language policies and practices in refugee settings (ProLanguage)

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Language is one of the factors that can enhance the migrants' and refugees' life, their physical and mental wellbeing, and improve their chances of staying mobile. Language is key for communication, information sharing, participation in social processes, education, and training. It is a tool for access to cultural and material resources and an expression of identity. It can strengthen resilience, prevent conflict, and strengthen communities. Story-telling can address loss, displacement, and trauma and can act as an intervention to support mental well-being. Book-sharing can facilitate language development in young children and promote child cognitive and socio-emotional development. At the same time, language can be a barrier if language policies and a language support system is not in place, making it difficult for refugees to find their way around, ask for help and support to meet their needs. In contrast, when effective language policies and language support are in place that can enable people to receive information in a language they understand, language can empower people, enable them to navigate the new environment and increase their chances of mobility in their journey. Language skills are also key for building and maintaining social networks during the journey, and for achieving a successful socio-cultural integration in the destination country.To date, there are pockets of good practice in terms of language policy and language support in some refugee settings, but there is also a lot of variation between countries and refugee settings. There is often limited awareness of good practice across settings, regions, and countries, and a lack of coordinated work and knowledge sharing. The proposed network addresses the role of language as a protective factor in refugee settings. It addresses how language and language policies in refugee settings can enhance their physical and mental health and wellbeing, act as social protection, enhance their chances for mobility, and facilitate their integration in the destination societies. This network adopts a cross-disciplinary approach including academic and non-academic partners. Academics include researchers within the disciplines of linguistics, language policy, ethnography, history, translation studies, education, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience and will bring the state of the art evidence from research. Non-academic organisations include national and international NGOs working with refugees and migrants and will bring their experience, for example, on how translators can support refugees (Translators Without Borders), on the role of home language on supporting mental health (Mothertongue), and the role of book-sharing to promote child cognitive and socio-emotional development (The Mukhulu Trust). Academic and non-academic organisations will provide input on the state of affairs, identify good and bad practice, identify priorities as well as training needs that promise to make a difference. The University of Reading is in a privileged position to coordinate the network because it brings together under the umbrella of the Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism (CeLM) a coherent team of researchers from different disciplines who have an international record of publications and impact activities on language acquisition, migration, language planning and policy. The outcome of this network has the potential to impact academic and non-academic stakeholders working on migration and refugees, and can benefit refugees living in camps, people working and volunteering in refugee camps, camp managers, NGOs (at local, national and international level), language teachers and educators working with refugees inside and outside the camps, policy makers working on language policies, and media operators working on migration and refugees, leading to inclusiveness and socio-cultural integration.