Translanguaging has been widely celebrated in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and English-Medium Instruction (EMI) classrooms as an inclusive pedagogy and a marker of progressive multilingual education. Yet beneath this celebratory discourse, scholarly attention to its equity and justice implications remains limited, raising questions about whether translanguaging disrupts systemic inequities or reproduces them in new forms. Addressing this gap, this systematic review applies a justice lens to EFL/EMI translanguaging scholarship, analysing 58 empirical studies published between January 2019 and June 2025 through Nancy Fraser's redistribution, recognition and representation framework, developed in Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World (2009, Columbia University Press) framework of redistribution, recognition and representation. The findings reveal an emerging socio-critical orientation, though one constrained by a partial critique. While studies predominantly foreground recognition by affirming multilingual identities and legitimising diverse repertoires, issues of redistribution (equitable access to resources) and representation (decision-making power) remain marginal. This imbalance generates a legitimacy bottleneck, where classroom-level recognition does not reliably translate into broader structural reform. To respond to this limitation, the review advances a four-dimensional framework comprising resistance, redesign, redistribution and representation, highlighting implications for equity-oriented assessment practices, resourcing and institutional policy towards sustained multilingual justice.
Qu et al. (Thu,) studied this question.