Research on language in refugee education tends to focus on either academic achievement, or on sociocultural experiences of language among refugee learners. In this paper, I bring these two perspectives together, examining competing narratives through over 100 interviews with refugee children, their adult caregivers, and education decision-makers living and working in Kampala, Uganda. I find that education decision-makers (including teachers, programme leaders and policymakers) describe refugee families’ use of one, shared and protected ‘home language’, and describe English in contrast as the primary language of opportunity. Refugee families, on the other hand, describe a much more complex and contested linguistic repertoire that does not include one stable and protected ‘home language’, but rather a multilingualism developed through forced migration and family separation. Families also discuss the central but not exclusive value of English, and concerns about opportunities for connection and return to places and people of origin without pre-migration linguistic repertoires. Building on concepts of mobile speech and translanguaging, and drawing on literature related to family language policies, I propose a new concept, refracted family language ecologies, to more fully capture the linguistic practices and aspirations of refugee families.
Celia Reddick (Wed,) studied this question.