Negotiating their double identity as Mauritians and Muslims in multilingual and in multiethnic Mauritius, Mauritian Muslims have been socialised into reading and writing in Kreol in madrassahs, while they have never been exposed to Kreol literacy in mainstream education. At the point where Kreol is being introduced as an optional school subject,…

Sociocultural and socio-economic conditions (e.g. subsistence family farming needs) as well as the absence of nearby public schools result in Ghanaian youth, primarily from rural areas, not receiving formal schooling. Because of this, children may never learn to read and write. One solution is a complementary education programme (CEP) that…

Learning outcomes are always the product of the interaction between individual learner agency and social structures. Recently concern has been expressed about unequal access to English, recognised as an important resource for social advancement, for rural populations in developing countries. This paper explores this issue by focusing on one…

Informed by linguistic ecological theory and the notion of identity, this study investigates language uses and identity construction in interactions among students with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds in a multilingual university. Individual and focus-group interviews were conducted with two groups of students: Hong Kong (HK) and…

Discusses strategies of social mobility involving education, occupational or residential change, and migration as well as the implications for language behavior of these strategies. The article assesses current theories of language maintenance and shift, drawing on network concepts and referring to change in an Irish-speaking community in…