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DOI: 10.1177/13670069010050030201
2001 5: 259International Journal of Bilingualism
Ingrid Piller
identity and citizenship
Naturalization language testing and its basis in ideologies of national
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259
The International Journal of Bilingualism
Naturalization language testing and citizenship
Naturalization language testing
and its basis in ideologies
of national identity and citizenship*
Ingrid Piller
University of Sydney
Acknowledgments*
I am indebted to Adrian Blackledge, Aneta Pavlenko, and three anonymous reviewers for their insightful
comments.
Abstract
National belonging is a central facet of modern social identities. In Europe,
nation-building often went hand in hand with linguistic nationalism. While the
monarchial empires that preceded the modern nation had been multilingual
polities (e.g., the Habsburg Empire), nations were founded on the ideology of
“One Language, One Nation.” Nations are not only “Imagined Communities,”
that is, systems of cultural representation whereby people come to imagine a
shared experience of identification with an extended community, but also
exclusionary historical and institutional practices to which access is restricted
via citizenship. Linguistic restrictions to such access can be found in naturalization
language testing, which usually takes place during the naturalization interview and tests the applicant’s
proficiency in a country’s official and/or majority language. In this paper I examine the interrelationship of
ideologies of national and linguistic identity and the ways in which they impact upon ideologies of citizenship.
I describe current naturalization legislation in a number of countries and the ways in which it is based on these
ideologies. The paper has a special focus on Germany where naturalization legislation changed on January 1st,
2000. I describe the linguistic tests as they are stipulated by law and as they are conducted in actual practice.
Finally, I turn away from the national ideologies behind these language tests to the linguistic ideologies that
(mis)inform them. The data for this analysis come mainly from legal texts pertaining to naturalization, but also
from newspaper accounts and interviews with naturalization candidates. I will show that the relationship
between naturalization and language requirements depends on the different national ideologies that the various
countries hold. The paper ends with the conclusion that most of the practices I report on are compatible neither
with a contemporary understanding of citizenship nor with recent advances in linguistic research and the study
of multilingualism.
1Introduction
Language rights have developed as a central concern in the field of multilingualismin recent
years (e.g., Benson, Grundy, & Skutnabb-Kangas, 1998; Kibbee, 1998; Kontra, Phillipson,
Skutnabb-Kangas, & Várady, 1999). Most of the work that has been published in this area
Main Articles
Address for correspondence
Volume 5 Number 3 September 2001, 259– 277
Linguistics Department, F12, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. e-mail: <ingrid.piller@linguistics.usyd.edu.au>
Key words
language legislation
language testing
nation
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I. Piller
deals with issues of language maintenance, bilingualservices and educationalmatters as they
affect minority languages. However, the ways in which language interrelates with citizenship
have rarely been addressed from a sociolinguistic perspective (but see e.g., Marek, 1998;
Wiley, 1998), and, in particular, there is little linguistic work on language testing as it is used
in the naturalization processes of various countries. Inquiry into the role of language in the
processes of nation-building and in the acquisition of citizenship has, by and large, been left
to sociologistsand politicaltheorists(e.g., Kymlicka, 1995;Watson, 2000).This lacuna in the
sociolinguisticliteratureon languagerights is the more surprising as the right to citizenshipin
one’s country of residence can indeed be considered a basic human right which is frequently
linked to linguistic requirements. Exiles have found again and again that their very survival
may be threatened without a passport (Klaus Mann, 1994, “Der Mensch braucht einen Pass
zum Leben,” ‘Human beings need a passport to survive’). Even if for most migrants survival
does not depend upon citizenship, their social, political, and economic rights do, because
almost all countries reserve for their citizens the right to vote, access to certain forms of
welfare, or the option to apply for certain jobs.
In Germany, where it is not uncommon to speak of “Auslaender in der dritten
Generation,” ‘foreigners of the third generation’, and where many migrants and their
descendants have not been able to obtain the citizenship of their country of residence, a
passionate public debate was waged in 1999 about who was to be a German citizen. The
alleged failure of certain migrant groups to learn German became a central issue in the debate
(along with many others such as religion, assimilation, dual citizenship, etc.). In January 2000
I was asked to participate in a panel discussion at Hamburg University and to report on the
linguistic requirements that comparable countries place upon their naturalization applicants.
As I prepared for that event, the paucity of research on the relationship between citizenship
and naturalization language testing became apparent to me, as well as the reasons for that
scarcity. The interrelationship between national identity, citizenship and language is so
complex and ideologically fraught that it seems almost impossible to disentangle the various
strands. I certainly do not claim to have cut this Gordian knot in the present paper. Rather, I
hope to show that the complex interrelationshipof ideologiesof national identity, citizenship,
and language is one of their very characteristics, and that they impact upon naturalization
language testing as a whole. I will address this interrelationship first in a series of pairs in
which I explore the relationship between national identity and language, between national
identity and citizenship, and between citizenship and language. I will then go on to describe
the legislation and practice of naturalization language testing in Germany, and how it can be
seen as a result of national and linguistic ideologies held by legislators and naturalization
officers (and shared by the public at large).
2National identity and language
National belongingis a central form of modern social identities. The “Who-Am-I”-test, a test
for determining the content of self-concepts widely used in social psychology, which was
devised by Kuhn and McPartland (1954) and is also known as the “Twenty-Statements-Test,”
shows just how important national identity is for the concept of self: “Racial or national
heritage” invariablyfigures among the first five words or phrases in the list people write up to
describe who they are (Scott & Spencer, 1998, pp.428ff). Despite this central position which
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national identity has come to occupy in the minds of people, it is an essentially modern
concept, with nations and national consciousness mainly dating from the 19th century
(Anderson, 1991).Anderson (1991) argues that, with the advent of “print capitalism,” people
came to imagine themselves as members of a particular group who could all read the same
texts. He sees nations as systems of cultural representationwhereby people come to imagine a
shared experience of identification with an extended community. He traces the codevelopment
of identity construction through national belonging and mother tongue affiliation and
describes how they depend upon each other. In this account a common language is the most
central constituent in the formation of a nation and national identity. Indeed, many national
projects are driven by this ideology of “one language, one nation.” Balibar(1991) or Marek
(1998), for instance, describe the disseminationof Standard French as a time-honored tool for
establishinga nationalconsciousnessin France. However, “one language, one nation” is not a
fact but an ideology which may be used in national projects. Even within Europe, which is
often described as the stronghold of monolingual national ideologies (Giddens, 1987), many
examples exist that demonstrate that nationsmay be built on other unifyingmyths than the one
of a common language. Belgium and Switzerland construct unified nations despite the fact
that more than one official language is used within their borders. On the other hand, Austria
and Germany construct different national identities for themselves despite the fact that they
share a common language. On a global scale, a common languageis the exception rather than
the rule in nation-building (Giddens, 1987, p.172). Indeed, the European project which has
been trying to forge a “European Union identity” (García, 1997) for its citizens is a multilingual
one (see below for a fuller discussion of linguistic and national ideologies in the
European project).
Apart from the myth of a common language, national projects may be based upon three
other ideologies (Yuval-Davis, 1997, p.12): nations may be based upon a myth of a common
origin, a common culture, or common citizenship. Of course, these prototypes are not nicely
separated but usually co-occur in an ideological melange. “European Union identity,” for
instance, is being built on at least four ideologies (García, 1997): first, there is the idea of
common values resulting from a common heritage and shared memories. Second, there is the
idea of a common culture which is not pictured as unity but as a family of related cultures with
a long history of exchanges and cross-fertilization. Third, there is the politicalproject to build
unity in peace after war and to prevent Europeans from ever waging war against each other
again. And fourth, European identity is an economic identity which is driven by the search for
economic modernization and prosperity under democratic governance. Language as such is
not accorded any leading role in the creation of European identity, and certainly not a single
language. On the contrary, linguistic diversity is heralded as one of the strengths of the
European Union. The European Commissioner of Social Affairs, Padraig Flynn, for instance,
proclaimed that “Europe’s strength lies in its ethnic, linguistic, and cultural diversity” (Flynn,
1993, p.14). Despite a de facto dominance of English and French as the preferred languages
of the Commission (Quell, 1998), multilingualism is officially espoused in European
language policies. In educational policy, the acquisition of at least two foreign languages is
promoted (Andersen, 1997, p. 33), and indeed many of the Danish and German employers
Andersen (1997) interviewed expected trilingualism from their employees.
The example of the European Union might suggest that there is a real chance to
overcome the “one language, one nation” myth in the 21st century: both the language part as
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monolingual policies give way to multilingual ones, and the nation part as nation states give
way to supranational forms of political and economic organization1
. However, linguistic
nationalism is not only the baggage that the 20th century inherited from the 19th but seems
destined to be handed down to the 21st century also. Coulmas (1995) points out that the
continued existence of linguistic nationalism was confirmed by German unification, which
demonstrated an unquestionedacceptance—on the part of Germany and its neighbors and all
the political players involved in unification— of the principle that one nation with one
language should be joined in one polity. Thus, to Coulmas (1995), German unification only a
decade before the turn of the century is proof of the continuedpower of linguisticnationalism.
As I will show below, it is proof of nationalism but not of linguistic nationalism as German
national identity is mainly founded upon the ideology of a common origin and a common
culture, which is seen as deriving from common ancestry.
In the 19th and early 20th century, nation building was typically conceived of as
monolingual nation building as is well demonstrated by the language policies and ideologies
of “late nations” such as Germany and Malaysia (Watson, 2000). Immigration countries have
similarly felt that one of the ways to socialize immigrants into their new national identity was
via teaching of the official language. In 1920, the State of Nebraska, for instance, put forward
the following argument against allowing children to be educated in German, their first
language:
The object of the legislation […] was to create an enlightened American citizenship in
sympathy with the principles and ideals of this country, and to prevent children reared in
America from being trainedand educatedin foreignlanguagesand foreignideals beforethey
have the opportunity to learn the English language and observe American ideals. […] The
purposeof the statuteis to insurethatthe Englishlanguageshallbe the mothertongueand the
language of the heart of the children reared in this country who will eventually become the
citizens of this country.
(Meyer v. Nebraska 262 U.S. at 393–394; quotedfrom Kibbee, 1998a, p.3)
Nebraska was the first, and for a long time the only, U.S. State which passed a constitutional
amendment making English the only official language of that state in 1920 (Crawford,
1998, p. 120). Since then, 20 more states have adopted such measures, most of them
since 1980 (Crawford, 1998, p. 120). In their campaigns and rationalizations for these
measures legislators are fond of quoting Theodore Roosevelt, who linked the English
language with American nationalidentity:
We have room for but one languagein this country, and that is the English language,for we
intendto seethatthe crucibleturnsour peopleout asAmericans, ofAmericannationality,and
not as dwellers in a polyglotboarding-house.
(Quoted from Crawford, 1998, p.100)
1
Two reviewers pointed out to me that the official multilingualism policy of the European Union does not preclude a one
nation-one language ideology, where additional/second languages are seen as nonthreatening. There can be no doubt
that the status of “elite bilingualism” differs significantly from that of “folk bilingualism.” While the latter tends to be
seen as threatening to the unity of the nation, the former often is regarded as desirable. At the same time, Britain is
probably the only EU country that has nothing to lose at all from the EU policy of official multilingualism. For all the
other nations, becoming multilingual means first and foremost learning English, and there are segments in all these
countries that do indeed perceive the learning of English as a threat to their national identities, as is evidenced, for
instance, by the Loi Toubon in France or the campaigns of purist organizations in Germany (Piller, 2001).
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Also in the U.S.A., and much more recently, a judge even denounced teaching an
American child a language other than English, in this case Spanish, as child-abuse:
If she starts first grade with the other children and cannot even speak the language that the
teachersand the other childrenspeak, and she’s a full-bloodAmericancitizen, you’re abusing
that child and relegatingher to the position of a housemaid.
(Quoted from MacGregor-Mendoza,1998, p.65f.)
The above examples testify to conceptionsof nationalidentitythat see it as essential and
monolithic. However, social scientists have come to see all social identities, including
national identities, as relational, cultural, historical, and contingent(Tilly, 1995). Tilly (1995,
p.5f) describes social identity as relational because identities are located “in connections
among individuals and groups rather than in the minds of particular persons or of whole
populations.” Social identities are cultural because they “rest on shared understandings, and
their representations,” and they are historical because memories, understandings, and means
of action within particular identities are path-dependent.Finally, social identity is contingent
because it is “a strategic interaction liable to failure or misfiring rather than […] a straightforward
expression of an actor’s attributes.” There can be no doubt that ideologies of national
and linguistic identity, as most commonly expressed in linguistic nationalism, converge and
that speakers of an official languageare granted privilegedaccess to the nation qua theirstatus
as “native speakers” (Piller, in press). Despite the fact that “nation” and “state” are different
concepts—politically,economicallyand socially—they cannot be understoodindependently
of each other as national ideologies provide the legitimation for the exclusiveness of
citizenship(Faist, 1997), as I will discuss below.
3National identity and citizenship
Although nations are imagined in the sense of Anderson (1991), they are also real in the fact
that membership is restricted via citizenship. Therefore nations are not simply phantasmagoria
of the mind but “historicaland institutionalpractices throughwhich social difference
is inventedand performed” (McClintock, 1993,p.61). Citizenshipis the productof the nation
state which confers many rights and privileges upon its bearers. National identity and
citizenship are two distinct categories. Scott and Spencer(1998, pp.428ff) emphasize that,
while “racial or nationalheritage” figuresprominentlyamong the first words or phrases in the
“Who-am-I”-test (see above), this does not mean that people state their “current citizenship.”
For instance, many of the Toronto Italian-Canadian youths whom Giampapa (this issue)
interviewed described themselves as “Italian” in reference to their heritage rather than as
“Canadian” in reference to their current citizenship. Whichever aspect of their identities they
chose to highlight, they made a distinction between national identity as heritage and national
identity as citizenship. Similarly, Blackledge (this issue) describes how Bengali immigrants
in Britain explain their literacy practices with reference to their identity by saying “we are
Bengali.”This perceptionis put forward not onlyby the immigrants themselvesbut also by the
British State as it continues to define Black and Irish immigrants as dependents rather than
citizens (Faulks, 1998, p.118). Likewise, in Sweden official statistics make use of a category
of “immigrants” which includes both immigrants with foreign citizenship and Swedish
citizens with at least one parent born abroad (Ålund, 1999, p.148). In my own work (Piller,
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1999), I have shown that women with a partner of different nationality are oftentimes no
longer perceived as full members of their native nationalcommunity. In yet another example,
the native Austrians interviewed in Wodak, de Cillia, Reisigl, and Liebhart(1999) did not
believe that Austrian citizenship alone qualified a person for inclusion in the group of
Austrians. Rather a host of other factors such as German language affiliation, Austrian
ancestry, being born and bred in Austria, Catholicism, love of Austria, and so forth were
considered as constitutive of “Austrianness.” Citizenship is thus a multilayered concept and
nation and state need to be seen as different concepts. Sociologists describe this distinction
between “full” and “peripheral” citizens with the concept of “thick” and “thin” citizenship
(Tilly, 1995). Thick citizenship can be defined as “a more total relationship, inflected by
identity, social positioning, cultural assumptions, institutional practices and a sense of
belonging”(Werbner & Yuval-Davis, 1999, p.4). Thin citizenship, on the other hand, entails
a much more limited number of relations, transactions, rights, and obligations. On a scale
from thick to thin citizenship, native-born citizens of privileged ethnicity, race, class, gender,
religion and so forth would be placed at the thick end, while non-naturalized residents of
discriminated against groups would be located on the very thin end. This distinction between
thick and thin citizenship explains the “perpetual strangerhood” (Ålund, 1999, p. 150) of
immigrants and their precarious status as “ambivalent citizens” (Werbner & Yuval-Davis,
1999, p. 18). While naturalization alone does not make for a thick relationship, it is a
significant step forward on the scale from thin to thick. It is a legal classification procedure
which offers or denies the significant rights and privileges that come with the technical right
to be “a citizen of X.” In most countries, noncitizens are excluded from many forms of social
welfare, politicalrepresentation, and civil rights. As such, the identity of citizenshipis one of
the most drastically coconstructed forms of social identity. The naturalization applicant’s
agency is only involved to the degree that they decide to apply for naturalization. However,
they can only “choose” to submit their application after fulfilling the relevant criteria as they
are set forth in the relevant naturalization legislation. Furthermore, their eligibility is then
tested by the naturalization office, who may—or may not—decide to confer the identity of
citizenship upon the applicant. The criteria upon which such decisions are based include
length of residence, the absence of a criminal record, economic and educational standards,
and proficiency in the official and/or majority language. In most cases, this state language is
a migrant’s second language (excepting cases such as Irish migrants in Australia, Austrian
migrants in Germany, French migrants in Quebec, etc.), and some form of languagetesting is
imposed. In the followingI will review some of these naturalizationlanguagetesting practices
in relation to ideologies of national identity and citizenship. I will only be concerned with
naturalization processes in rich postindustrial countries such as Australia, Canada, Germany,
Sweden, or the U.K. Citizenship in these welfare states and stable democracies based on
universal liberal, civil, and political rights is of significantly different value than citizenship
of African states or Eastern Europe. Therefore attaining such citizenship is of greater value to
non-natives and there will be a higher price on it as natives safeguard their privileges.
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4Citizenship and language
Different countries place considerably different language requirements on persons who want
to be naturalized. These may range from no language requirement at all via minimal requirements
to considerable proficiency. Ireland, Israel, Italy, and Sweden, for instance, do not
stipulate any language requirement at all in their respective naturalization legislation. Of
these, Israel and Sweden have seen large-scale immigration, and in both countriesthe absence
of a language requirement can be traced directly to the respective ideologies of national
identity. Israel does not demand proof of knowledge of or proficiency in Hebrew because
national belonging is largely based on religious and/or ethnic affiliation (Peled, 1992). Thus,
where there is a dominant myth of common origin (cf. also the German case below), language
becomes largely irrelevant. In Sweden, on the other hand, the absence of linguistic requirements
is tied to the policies of multiculturalism, rather than an understanding of the nation as
being built upon a common ethnicity or religion. Sweden conceives of the nation as a
community of citizens with the same obligations and rights, and, in conjunction with the
official ideologyof multiculturalism, this makes a Swedish languagerequirement for naturalization
dispensable. In the 1970s, Sweden, along with the other Scandinavian states,
embraced an egalitarian, multicultural ideology and policies aimed at the inclusion of
immigrants. Since the 1980s the character of the public debate has changed and migrants are
now mainlydiscussedas a problem, in terms of their allegedcriminal behaviorand the cultural
differences between “Us and Them” (Ålund, 1999, p.148).These changes in public discourse
have not(yet) affected naturalizationlegislation. In other countriesthat do not have a language
requirement in their naturalization legislation, large-scale immigration does not exist (e.g.,
Ireland), or it is a comparatively recent phenomenon (e.g., Italy). Finally, some countries do
not have language requirements in their naturalization legislation because immigration only
occurs on paper, that is, they offer so-called “off-shore citizenships” to investors (e.g.,
Dominica, Grenada, Belize, St. Kitts, & Nevis). Such countries, mainly in the Caribbean,
offer a Commonwealth passport in return for a substantial financial investment.
Naturalizationin these countries is therefore significantlydifferent from the other countriesto
be discussed here. The absence of language requirements in off-shore naturalizationdoes not
necessarily mean that economic concerns override ideological ones, as off-shore citizens do
not ideologically become part of the nation. However, the phenomenon of off-shore
citizenship throws into relief the value of citizenship as it provides the elite of poor countries
with a means to access certain rich countries, notably Britain.
Like Sweden, the classic immigration countries, Australia, Canada, and the U.S.A.,
define citizenship as based on rights and obligations. The Australian Citizenship
Act (Department of Immigration& MulticulturalAffairs, 1997)definesAustralian citizenship
as follows:
Australian citizenship represents formal membership of the community of the
Commonwealth ofAustralia; and
Australian citizenshipis a common bond, involvingreciprocalrights and obligations,uniting
all Australians,while respectingtheir diversity;and
Persons granted Australian citizenship enjoy these rights and undertake to accept these
obligationsby pledgingtheir loyalty to Australiaand its people, and
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by sharing their democraticbeliefs, and
by respectingtheir rights and liberties,and
by upholdingand obeying the laws ofAustralia.
(Departmentof Immigration & MulticulturalAffairs, 1997)
As a consequence of the ideology of common citizenship embraced by these countries,
language testing as part of the naturalization process is minimal in these states. Language
testing serves to show that the naturalization applicant has enough knowledge of the official
language to be able to understand and carry out the rights and duties conferred through
citizenship. In Australia, these duties are obeying the law, enrolling on the Electoral Register
and voting, serving on a jury if called, and defending Australia if needed. The privileges of
Australian citizenship consist of the right to vote, the right to stand in public elections, the
right to carry an Australian passport, the right to claim protection from Australian diplomatic
services while overseas, the eligibility to enlist in the armed forces and to apply for certain
government jobs, and the right to have children registered as Australian by descent
(Department of Immigration & Multicultural Affairs, 1998). In order to carry out these
privilegesand responsibilities, applicantshave to demonstrate that they “are able to speak and
understand basic English” (Department of Immigration & MulticulturalAffairs, 1998). Such
basic English skills are tested during an interview with an officer of the Department of
Immigration and MulticulturalAffairs. The main criterion is whether or not the applicant can
communicate with the officer without the aid of an interpreter. The interview entails checking
whether all the relevant documents are being presented, demonstrating knowledge of the
responsibilities and privileges of Australian citizenship, making a choice between two
different forms of citizenship pledges (an oath and an affirmation), an explanation of the
further procedure after the interview, and the opportunity to ask questions of the officer. In
this type of test, the purposes, the procedure, and the passing standard are clearly stated in the
relevant legislation.
In the U.S.A., similarly clear guidelinesexist aboutthe purposes, procedure, and passing
standards for the English language test which is administered during the naturalization
interview (Immigration and Naturalization Service, no date, p. 37). However, the passing
standards in the U.S.A. are higher than those in Australia, where only basic spoken English is
required. In the U.S.A., all four skills are tested in one of the following ways:
(1) Reading. In order to test your reading abilityyou may be asked:
to read out loud parts of the N-400 [a form detailing the rights and obligations of U.S.
citizenship—IP];
to read a set of civics questionsand then answer them; or
to read severalsimple sentencesout loud.
(2) Writing. In orderto testyourwritingskills, the INS [Immigrationand NaturalizationService
— IP] officer will ask you to write one or two simple sentences [sample sentences are
provided—IP].
(3) Speaking.Your speakingabilitywill be tested when youanswerquestionsaboutyourselfand
your applicationduring your interview.
(Immigration and NaturalizationService, no date)
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In Canada, where naturalization applicants may be tested in either English or French,
they need to demonstrate “adequateknowledge” (Anonymous, 1978, Section 14) to pass. The
Citizenship Regulations stipulate that the following be considered as “adequate knowledge”:
a. the vocabulary of the person in that language is appropriate for the conduct of those of his
[sic!] nonprofessionalactivities that reasonably can be expected to involve contact with the
general public in that language;
b. the person comprehends,in that language,simple spoken statements and questions in the
past, presentand future tenses; and
c. the oralexpressionof the personin thatlanguageaccuratelyconveyssimple informationwith
respect to the past, presentand future situations. (Anonymous,1978)
Immigration and, concomitantly, naturalization have always held a strong place in the
national projects of Australia, Canada, and the U.S.A. This is, however, not the case for
European countries where one native ethnic group is usually in a privileged relationship to a
given state2
and where large-scale immigration is a much more recent phenomenon. In
Germany, for instance, the phrase “Deutschland ist kein Einwanderungsland.” (“Germany is
not an immigrationcountry”) is ubiquitousin politicaldiscourse despitethe fact that, since the
early 1980s, Germany has consistently received more than twice as many immigrants as the
U.S.A. (on a per capita basis) (Vahedi, 1996, p.9). One could therefore expect that naturalization
procedures, including language requirements, might be considerably different in
Europe from the ones in Australia, Canada, and the U.S.A. As will become clear in the
following no single European pattern exists. Rather, the relationship between naturalization
and language requirements depends upon the different national ideologies that the various
countries hold. As has been pointed out above, Sweden and the other Scandinavian states
embrace an official ideology of multiculturalism. As ethnicity and language is not in a legally
favored relationship to the Swedish state (which of course does not say much about everyday
practices; cf. Ålund, 1999), no languagerequirement is to be met in the naturalizationprocess.
Britain does privilege its indigenous languages as naturalizees need to demonstrate a
knowledgeof either English orWelsh or Scottish Gaelic3
. But, as inAustralia, Canada, and the
U.S.A., these languageskills are required so that the naturalizeescan understand and carry out
the obligations and privileges associated with British citizenship. The naturalization guide
explicitly states this rationale:
Your knowledgeof the languagedoes not have to be perfect, but it must be sufficient for you
to fulfill your duties as a citizen, and to mix easily with the people with whom you live and
work. (Home Office, no date)
While an ideology of Britain as a nation based upon common citizenshipcan be inferred
from the first part of the explanation (“must be sufficient for you to fulfill your duties as a
citizen”), the second part ( “to mix easily with the people with whom you live and work”)
suggests that it is not only common citizenship but also some form of assimilationto the main
2
“Following the old joke ‘a language is a dialect that has its own army’, a nationality is an ethnicity bearing a favored
relationship to a particular state.” (Tilly, 1995, p.9)
3
I do not have any information on how many, if any, naturalization candidates do indeed choose to be tested in Welsh or
Scottish Gaelic.
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cultural and linguistic group that makes for a British citizen. The fact that the legal text
manages to embrace two distinct ideologiesof nationalbelongingin one sentence, confirms a
complex, and often contradictory, coexistence of modern concepts of citizenship and
premodern ones that conflate citizenship with national identity and see it based upon some
other form of commonality(language, culture, etc).
France is not torn by such conflicting ideologies. It unambiguously holds that
citizenship cannot be divided from nationality. The key criterion for national belonging is
languageand culture. “One is French by the use of the French language, by the internalization
of the culture, by the will to participate in economic and political life” (Schnapper, 1989;
quoted from Smith & Wistrich, 1997, p.239). For naturalization candidates this means that
Francophonesfrom a Francophonecountry do not even have to fulfill the minimum residence
requirement that is present in all naturalization legislation I have looked at. Naturalization
candidates whose first language is not French have to prove their assimilation in the naturalization
process: “Foreigners who want to be naturalizedhave to prove their assimilationto the
French community, in particular through a sufficient knowledge of French” (La
Documentation Française, no date; my translation). Ignoring obvious divisions that exist in
French society, Marek (1998), a French government official concerned with French language
planning issues, claims that this conflation of national identity and citizenship is a necessary
preconditionto ensure equal rights for native and non-native French citizens.
Like France, Germany espouses a national ideology in which citizenship cannot be
divided from national identity. However, unlike in France, national identity is not based upon
language and culture but rather upon ancestry. At first sight, this suggests that language does
not have any place at all in the naturalization process—indeed it almost precludes the very
existence of a naturalization process. However, Germany has seen significant levels of
immigration since the 1950s and naturalization has become a hotly contested issue in public
debate. Some legal changes have occurred and in the following I will show how the contestations
of who is to be a German citizen are playedout, among many otherarenas, in the German
testing practices during naturalizationproceedings.
5Naturalization and language testing
— The politics of exclusion
As has been pointedout above, the focus of social identityis very often the maintenanceof the
real or imagined boundary between “us” and “them” (Cohen, 1993; Jenkins, 1996). It can
therefore be assumed that the purpose of language testing in the naturalization process is not
necessarily the establishment of an objectivestandard of the applicant’s proficiency but rather
the maintenance of the boundary between nationals and non-nationals and the safe-guarding
of the privileges of the former. Language testing in these circumstances can serve to weed out
nondesirableapplicants. A drastic example of this process can be found in the reception Egon
Erwin Kisch received in Australia in 1934. When the National Socialists came to power
in 1933, Kisch, a well-known journalist, a Communist and a Jew, fled Germany for France.
In 1934 he traveled to Australia to attend the World Congress against War and Fascism in
Melbourne. When he was prevented from leaving his ship and even setting foot on Australian
soil by customs officials, he jumped ship in Sydney harbor and applied for asylum. In the
process of his hearings he had to take a Gaelic languagetest. Kisch, a multilingualwho spoke
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English, French, Russian, and Spanish in addition to his native Czech and German, promptly
failed, of course, and, after some more court hearings, was deported in 1935. He had to return
to the precarious French exile, and finally managed to escape to Mexicoin 1939(Kisch, 1993;
Nelles, 1999, p.24). One may reasonably wonder why he had to take a Gaelic test inAustralia.
The answer is that under the “White Australia” policy of the day he was not welcome as a
German, a Jew and a Communist. This being so, a legal condition which allowed for
immigrants to be tested “in any European language” could easily be used to justify his
exclusion. In the following I will show that the language testing in contemporary German
naturalization law functions as an exclusionary mechanism in much the same way as the
Australian language test of the 1930s did.
Smith and Wistrich (1997, p.231) point out that “the relationship between citizen of the
German State, German national, and German people is complex in the extreme”— a
complexity which can be blamed on an omnipresent ideologicalconfusion of nation and state
as well as competing myths of national belonging, with “common origin” leading the list.
Until January 1st, 2000 German nationality was almost exclusively acquired by descent (ius
sanguinis). As a result, language was only accorded a very subordinate role in the naturalization
process, if it was considered at all. On the one hand, ethnic Germans from Eastern
Europe were naturalized once they were settled in the country even if they had no German
language skills at all. All they had to demonstrate was German ancestry and “oppression” as
the reason for their lack of knowledge of the German language. On the other hand,
monolingual German speakers of Turkish ancestry would not have been naturalized. Rather
they were (and continue to be under some circumstances) considered “foreigners in the third
generation.”Thus, long-term residents, including persons born in the country, could not gain
German citizenship because they did not have German ethnicity. Although naturalization
procedures existed, they were very restricted and few applicants were successful (Smith &
Wistrich, 1997, p.231). For instance, 72% of theTurkish respondentsinVahedi’s (1996, p.86)
study, who were all long-term residents in Germany and in many cases born in the country,
claimed they would want to be naturalized if they fulfilled the criteria. As access to social
rights in Germany depends, by and large, on citizenship, residents without citizenship suffer
significant disadvantages. Smith and Wistrich (1997, p. 235) contrast the housing support,
help in finding employment, and learning German which is accessible to ethnic German
immigrants, to conditions placed upon non-German, non-EU immigrants seeking to be
unified with their spouses and families. The latter have to demonstrate adequate housing,
employmentthat will cover expenses(on the part of the applicant),and have to accept a ban on
seeking employment(on the part of the family member/s) until they have fulfilled a minimum
residence period—a regulation which mainly hits Turkish women, incidentally4
.
The coalition government of Labor and Greens which came to power in late 1998 had
promised to inauguratemore contemporary legislation based on residence (ius solis).After an
intense public debate in 1999 which saw the Conservative party organize public petitions
4
I mention this because this group of persons, immigrant Muslim women, are often pictured in the literature as oppressed by
patriarchial traditions which prevent them from seeking employment outside the home, thereby — and in other ways—
restricting their exposure to the target language. However, it tends to be conveniently ignored that these restrictions may just as
well have been placed by the “liberal Western society.” It is beyond the scope of this paper to explore this issue, and the differential
access of women and men both to the nation (e.g.,Yuval-Davis, 1997) and to the target language (e.g., Pavlenko & Piller,
2001) any further.
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against “dual citizenship” and about five million Germans sign their name to that petition,
compromise legislation came into force on January 1st, 2000. The compromise nature of the
new legislation is visible in the fact that “language” has come to occupy the middle ground
between the former criterion of “ancestry” and the modern criterion of “residence.”
NonethnicGermans can now be naturalizedinto German citizenshipif they have resided in the
country for at least eight years (in most cases) AND pass a German language test5
.
Naturalization candidates have to prove the following level of German language competence
in order to be considered for naturalization:
Sufficient knowledge of the German language is present if the naturalizationcandidate can
cope with his6
daily life in his German environment,including the normal contacts with the
authorities,and if a conversation that is appropriate to his age and educationallevel can be
conducted with him7
. This includes that the naturalization candidate is able to read and
understand a German text of everyday life and that he can summarize its major contents
orally. The competenceto communicateorally in a simple fashion is insufficient.
(Bundesministeriumdes Inneren, 2000b; my translation)
According to Section 86.1.2. the naturalizationauthorityhas to test whether the German
competence of the naturalization candidate conforms to the above standard. The authority
may waive the languagetest if the candidateholds a German-language certificate (“Zertifikat
Deutsch” or a comparable certificate), if they attended a German-medium school for a
minimum of four years and achieved passing grades, if they studied at a German university or
successfully passed vocational training in Germany. If the test is not waived, it is to be
conducted by the naturalization officer. Naturalization officers have paralegal and administrative
qualifications but their training includes no linguistic component whatsoever. As a
consequence, the German language testing practices differ widely between offices. When the
legislation was before parliament and finally passed in 1999, newspaper reports (e.g., Seidel,
1999)generally assumed that naturalizationofficers would ask candidatesto read and discuss
a newspaper article. Such media reports at the time of the introduction of the new law
generally showed awareness that one of the problems of this practice was that the difficulty of
such an exercise would vary dramatically depending on which newspaper the naturalization
officer would choose as the source text. However, none of the naturalization candidates I
interviewed informally about their experiences had been asked to read and discuss a
newspaper article. In total I interviewed eight naturalization applicants. All of them are of
Iranian background, with Farsi and/or Azeri as their first languages, have on average resided
in Germany for 16 years, and hold degrees from German universities or have completed
vocational training in Germany. Thus, their language tests could have been waived in
accordance with the legal regulations(see above) but they were not waived in a single one of
these cases. Their naturalization proceedings had on average taken six years, and five were
naturalizedafter the new law came into effect in January 2000.Three cases are pending(as of
5
Of course, other conditions also apply, for example, no criminal conviction, employment, giving up one’s former
citizenship, etc.
6
The masculine forms are used throughout the legal text.
7
The odd passive construction is present in the original (“und mit ihm ein seinem Alter und Bildungsstand
entsprechendes Gespräch geführt werden kann”). Below I will discuss the implications of this passive construction for
the nature of linguistic interaction as it is espoused in the legal text.
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January 2001). Four of these proceedingstook place in Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttembergand
four in Hamburg. The locale is important because, in the federal system of government,
naturalization is the responsibility of the states (“Laender”). Therefore, if guidelines exist at
all, they are likely to be issued on the state level rather than the national level. This is also
important because states with Conservative governments have placed higher burdens on
naturalization candidates than states with a Labor government. For instance, BadenWuerttemberg,
Bavaria, Berlin, Saxony, and Thuringia, all with Conservative-dominated
governments, routinely address an inquiry to the “Verfassungsschutz,” the authority which is
charged with safeguarding the constitution, to clear a naturalizationapplicantof any terrorism
charges before their application can be processed. The other states do not routinely suspect
each naturalization applicant of terrorism and accordingly do not place such a clearance
request (Seidel, 1999). Therefore one can assume the Labor states (e.g., Bremen, Hamburg,
Lower Saxony, North-Rhine Westphalia, or Schleswig-Holstein) to be also more liberal in
language matters. Those interviewees who applied for naturalizationin Baden-Wuerttemberg
and Bavaria had their orthography tested, usually by being given a dictation exercise. In one
case, an applicantwas asked to handwrite his CV. He was allowed to copy the typed CV he had
brought along in the presence of the officer. It is not quite clear which linguistic level this
exercise was supposed to test (presumably orthography and/or handwriting). The candidates
who were tested by naturalization officers in Hamburg, a more “liberal” state with a Labordominated
government, were asked to read a semilegal text about their future duties and
obligationsas German citizens. The text seems to have been the same in all cases and the interviewees
recalled that it contained a lengthy passage about the fact that, after naturalization,
they would no longerbe allowed to engagein terrorism (of course, they had neverbeen!).After
the applicantshad been allowed to read the one-page text in silence, they were asked whether
they had understood it. Upon replying in the affirmative, they were informed that their
language was up to standards. It is not clear whether the naturalization officers believed that
simply askingwhether the text had been understoodwas a reliable measure of comprehension,
or whether these were no “real” tests and the officers just went through the motions, maybe
because they judged the German competence on the basis of the applicants’ educational
attainment rather than upon the reading exercise. The latter possibility is suggested by a
comment made by one officer after the candidate had said that, yes, he had understood the
text. The officer then commented: “Sure, YOU wouldn’t have a problem but for some of your
Turkish colleaguesthis will be a tough one” (my translation).I take this to mean that not every
“Yes, I’ve understood the text” will be accepted in this context but that acceptability will
depend upon the speaker, specifically the category the speaker is placed in by the officer. In
the German system with its hierarchical stereotyping of migrants, Iranians, who mainly came
as political refugees and have achieved one of the highest educationallevels of all immigrant
groups (Statistisches Bundesamt, 1997, p. 43), rank above Turkish migrants, who mainly
came as labor migrants. As predominantly Muslim groups, both rank below European
immigrants, though.
6National and linguistic ideologies
So far, I have argued that the language requirements in naturalization legislation reflect
ideologies of national identity that various countries subscribe to. In the German case,
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contesting ideologies are reflected as various social and political groups in contemporary
Germany vie for the right to define national ideology. Since the 1970s and particularly in
the 1990s it had become increasingly clear that the “Reichs- und Staatsangehörigkeitsrecht”
(“Law aboutcitizenshipin the state and the empire”) datingfrom 1914(and in turn based upon
another such law dating from 1870; Bundesministerium des Inneren, 2000a) excluded too
many German residents from citizenship. As it based citizenship almost exclusively upon the
myth of “common blood” or common ancestry it barred an estimated seven million German
residents from citizenship (based on the numbers of foreign residents who had resided in
Germany for at least one year as publishedin Statistisches Bundesamt, 1997, p.21)8
. However,
the modern law in which German (legal) citizenship would be based on common obligations
and privileges, as it was envisaged by the new coalition government elected in 1998, met with
fierce resistance on the part of more conservative segments of the (ethnic) German public.
Ultimately, an ideology of national belonging as based on a common language, German, was
espoused as a kind of compromise between ancestry and citizenship. However, it is not only
nationalideologiesthat find expression in such legal practices but also linguisticideologies. In
the following I will discuss two linguistic ideologies, or lay theories if you will, that are tied in
with the national ideologies of current German naturalization legislation (in addition to the
ideology of “one nation, one language”), and serve to further restrict access to naturalization.
First, linguistic interaction, as it takes place in the naturalization interview, is conceptualized
as a one-way street. This is most notable in the phrase “Ausreichende Kenntnisse der
deutschen Sprache liegen vor, wenn […] mit ihm ein seinem Alter und Bildungsstand
entsprechendes Gespräch geführt werden kann.” (Bundesministerium des Inneren, 2000b;
“Sufficient knowledge of the German language is present if […] a conversation that is
appropriateto his age and educationallevel can be conductedwith him”; my translation).This
phrase implies a naturalizee who is a passive recipient of a German conversation. By contrast,
discourse analysts have for a long time insisted that the success of a conversationis negotiated
by all interactants, that meaning is negotiated and that the communicative burden needs to be
shared. Gumperz (1982), for instance, describes understanding as an interactive process
which is mutually constructed in the course of inferencing by all participantsin an encounter.
The legislative framework shifts this burden unilaterally onto the naturalization applicant
while “the right to speak” and “the power to impose reception” (Peirce, 1995, p.18, following
Bourdieu, 1977) is exclusively granted to the naturalization officer (see Blackledge &
Pavlenko, this issue, for a more detailed exploration of these concepts). Of course, this is not
an uncommon phenomenon in interactions between native and non-native speakers (e.g.,
Lippi-Green, 1997for such interactionsin the U.S.A.). However, the reification of such differential
access to the negotiationof meaning in a legal text testifies to the absence of any kind of
discourse analytic expertise in (cross-cultural) communication that might have guided the
writing of a text about language and language testing.
Second, the legal provisions as well as the testing practice in the naturalization
interviews are guided by the assumption that any (monolingual)native speaker can judge the
proficiency of a second language speaker. The law does not stipulate any form of linguistic
8
More than two million of these had resided in the country for 20 or more years, and another 1.5 million
for 10–20 years. Since 1990 about 150,000 children each year have been born in Germany who were not
eligible to become citizens of the country of their birth (Statistisches Bundesamt, 1997, p.24).
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training for naturalization officers nor does it provide clear easy-to-follow guidelines about
the purposes, procedure, and passing standards that such an untrained officer might adhere to
(as do Australia, the U.S.A., and, to a lesser degree, Canada; see above). Thus, at no point are
test validity, difficulty, reliability, applicability, relevance, replicability, or interpretability
accounted for (criteria which Henning, 1987 suggests for test evaluation). As differences in
the rater behavior are a well-documented phenomenon in language testing research (see
Bachman, 2000, p.11 for an overview), the absence of both, training and guidelines, is likely
to result in glaring injustices in this crucial test. As my interviews with naturalization
applicants have shown it is not only the rating which differs between states, and, most
probably, individualofficers, but also the nature of the task itself. Indeed, the central role that
orthography plays in the test testifies to the officer’s nonexistent linguistic training and their
subscription to a particular ideology of what language is (see below). Few linguists would
consider orthography the most central linguistic skill, and most would consider a handwriting
test ludicrous. The concern with orthographybespeaksa normativeview of languagethat sees
its essence as residing essentially in the written, rather than spoken, form. Language testing
professionals have increasingly become concerned with the ethics of language testing, and
they have concomitantly argued for codes of practice and professionalization (Bachman,
2000). Indeed, in their view validity and ethics are dialecticallyintertwined (Bachman, 2000;
Chapelle & Douglas, 1993; Spolsky, 1990). Nowhere do the legal provisions specify how sure
naturalization officers as language testers can or should be of their decisions, and how sure
they are of their evidence—both of which are questions of validity and ethics.
7Conclusion
Ideologies of national identity are a central facet of modern social identities and they are
intricately bound up with linguistic identity. Furthermore national identity is crucially
implicated in citizenship. In an age of mass migration affiliationthrough nationalidentityand
affiliation through citizenship may not necessarily be the same. However, if social and
political rights in a country depend upon citizenship, the availability of citizenship to all
residents is a democratic and social justice imperative. However, even well-established, stable
Western democracies, such as Germany, may flout such a basic democratic principle (“No
taxation without representation”) because of ideologies of national belonging that they hold.
In this article I have shown that different national ideologies, as they are embraced by various
countries, lead to strikingly different stipulations as regards knowledge of the official and/or
majoritylanguageof a country. Ideologiesof nationalidentitydo not onlyresult in the absence
or presence of language requirements for naturalization applicants whose first language is a
language other than the state language but they also guide the specific forms the language
testing takes. Another set of ideologies that may impact upon the testing practices are
linguistic ideologies, as I showed for the German case.
The language testing practices as they are imposed upon naturalization applicants in
Germany sadly lack both democratic and linguistic validity. They are undemocratic because
they fail to make common rights and obligations the central criterion of citizenship. Indeed,
the exclusionary criterion of ancestry that used to be the central criterion of German
citizenship throughoutthe 20th century, has been supplanted by another criterion, knowledge
of the German language, that may be used in similarly exclusionary ways because the tests to
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ascertain that knowledge are completely arbitrary. The very arbitrariness of the language
testingpractices results in theirlack of linguisticvalidity. The test as it is formulated in the law
and applied in practice fails to conform even to the most basic criteria according to which the
quality of languagetests can be judged(validity, reliability, replicability, interpretability,etc).
While the law’s failure to conform even to basic standards of language testing reflects
poorly upon the expertiseof legislators, it also reflects poorly upon languageprofessionals, be
they linguistic researchers or language educators, who have consistently failed to raise their
voices in the public debate about naturalization, and— if they did — failed to be heard. I
regard this not only as an ethical failure in the sense that any participation in knowledge
making processes carries the obligationto their dissemination, but also as a research failure in
the sense that language tests do not exist, and therefore cannot be understood, outside the
social contexts in which they are used, and which tend to be gate-keeping contexts. In his
history of modern language testing, Spolsky (1995), for instance, demonstrates that we only
get half the picture if we ignore the social, political,and institutionalcontexts, constraints,and
motivationsof language testing. Or as Bachman (2000, p.23) argues:
[…] investigatingthe constructvalidityof interpretationswithoutalsoconsideringvaluesand
consequencesis a barren exercise inside the psychometric test-tube,isolated from the realworld
decisions that need to be made and the societal, political, and educational mandates
that impel them.
Indeed, the failure of German language professionals to raise their voices in the debate
about naturalization also testifies to the hegemonic nature of these ideologies of national
belongingthat motivate legislators.
On an international level, and beyond the impact that national ideologies may have on
our own work, language professionals should not be too surprised that the language testing
practices in the naturalizationproceedingsof many countriessadly lack professionalismand a
code of practice. As long as internationallymost professional programs, including master’s or
doctoral degree courses in language teaching and applied linguistics do not require any
coursework or guided practice in language testing (Bachman, 2000), we should not expect
naturalizationlegislators to lead the way.
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The International Journal of Bilingualism
Naturalization language testing and citizenship
Appendix
Policy documents
ANONYMOUS (1978).CitizenshipRegulationsC.R.C. 1978. Quoted from:
<http://www.americanlaw.com/basic/cdnnat.html>
(last visited 15 January 2000).
Bundesministeriumdes Inneren(2000a).Auslaendergesetz Section 1.2. Quoted from:
<http://www.bmi.bund.de/themen/staatsangehoerigkeit_gesetz01.html>
(last visited 15 January 2000)
Bundesministeriumdes Inneren(2000b).Auslaendergesetz Section 86. Quoted from:
<http://www.bmi.bund.de/themen/auslaender_gesetz86.html>
(last visited 15 January 2000)
Department of Immigration and MulticulturalAffairs(1997).Form 1063i. 10/97.
Department of Immigration and MulticulturalAffairs(1998).FormA1027i. 10/98.
Home Office (no date). Naturalizationas a British Citizen: A Guide for Applicants. Quoted from:
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/ind/nat1.htm(last visited 15 January2000)
Immigration and NaturalizationService (no date). A Guide to Naturalization.
La DocumentationFrançaise(no date). Admitrance: DevenirFrançais par naturalization. Quoted from:
<http://vosdroits.admitrance.gouv.fr/ARBO/080/0/-NXETRI3/.html>
(last visited 15 January 2000)
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