Center for Intercultural Dialogue

Call for Submissions: special issue on Family Language Policy and Processes of Marginalization, for journal Social Inclusion. Abstract deadline: 15 September 2026.

Guest Editors: Giorgia Andreolli (Eurac Research); Busani Maseko (Rhodes University); and Nadja Thoma (University of Innsbruck)

Family Language Policy (FLP) has become an influential research area within different disciplines such as sociolinguistics, language policy research, childhood studies, education, and psychology. While pioneering FLP research was concerned with language ideologies and language acquisition processes typically within traditional nuclear families, more recent studies have expanded their focus to include how
language ideologies, practices, and management unfold within both traditional and non-traditional family configurations, including extended families, foster or adoptive families, and geographically dispersed families. Beyond the individual level, research has further traced FLP processes across families and explored interconnections with educational institutions and with the state. Recent publications shed light on children’s agency and perspectives in FLP and on digital practices in family communication. There is growing recognition that
FLP is deeply implicated in broader processes of marginalization and social inequality—particularly in contexts of globalization, (post)colonial language policies, minoritized language communities, and socioeconomic exclusion. Despite this recognition, the intersections between FLP and structural forms of marginalization (e.g., assimilation pressures, unequal access to resources, racialization, and socioeconomic stratification) remain under-theorized and empirically underexplored.

Building on foundational work that conceptualizes FLP as a nexus of language beliefs, practices, and management within the family domain, this Special Issue seeks to foreground the ways in which structural conditions shape—and are shaped by—the experiences of multilingual families. We invite contributions that examine FLP in relation to marginalization, language and educational policies, racialization, socioeconomic disadvantage, disability, heteronormativity, and other axes of differentiation, as well as studies that document resilience, resistance, agency, and inclusion strategies enacted by families and other social actors in diverse settings.

This Special Issue is international in scope, seeking comparative and contextually grounded research that illuminates how FLP intersects with macro-level processes of access, participation, and social justice. We welcome both empirical and conceptual contributions from a variety of epistemological and methodological approaches including (but not limited to) critical theoretical work, decolonial scholarship, and arts -based methods. By embracing diverse linguistic and cultural contexts, the Issue aims to chart new directions in FLP research that advance understanding of processes marginalization in multilingual postcolonial and post-migrant societies.