Minority language education regimes in territorial autonomy

This article analyzes the intersection between minority language education and self-governance. We argue that special forms of territorial autonomy provide some of the most robust, interesting minority language regimes, and that language protection is central to territorial autonomy. Utilizing medium-N qualitative comparison of thirty different autonomous regions, including several Asia-Pacific and non-democratic cases, we analyze regional legislation and secondary sources to show the great range of language policies in autonomous regions. Perhaps surprisingly, some autonomous regions do not place much emphasis on minority language education, due to language lacking political salience, limited resources, and/or linguistic fragmentation. However, in many autonomous regions, language is the central issue, with autonomous powers enabling some of the world’s most far-reaching minority language education regimes. To help make sense of the varied cases, this article develops a typology to categorize autonomous regions based on the strength of the regional language regime and number of official languages.