Language proficiency under legal precarity: bounded pathways to social integration

How do migrants experience and make sense of host-country language proficiency under conditions of legal precarity, and how do they perceive its influence on members of the host society? While language is commonly viewed as a key driver of social integration, empirical evidence of its effects often implicitly assumes contexts of legal stability, institutional support, and formal language instruction—conditions under which linguistic competence can be readily converted into deep and durable social ties. Much less is known about how language operates when these assumptions do not hold. Drawing on in-depth interviews and participant observation with forcibly displaced migrants in Israel, where legal recognition is denied and pathways to formal incorporation are severely constrained, this study shows that language proficiency continues to matter, but in qualitatively different ways. Rather than producing classic integration outcomes such as interethnic friendships, language reshapes the micro-dynamics of everyday interaction: it fosters interactional confidence, enables more assertive self-positioning, and elicits more respectful and trusting responses from host-society members, while also exposing the limits of inclusion under legal precarity. Taken together, the study demonstrates how language generates bounded yet consequential forms of social integration in contexts of legal precarity.