The focus of the PhD project is placed on linguistic and cultural discourses which come to light in the course of merging communes in the Canton of Graubünden. The reform of political structures is currently a major topic on the political agenda, and the issues of language and culture are particularly sensitive at the language borders in Graubünden.

This project lays out a critical approach towards a pedagogy of diversity that takes social inequality among children as a starting point and reflects on how social processes at school transform social inequality into educational inequality. The project investigates the ideological foundations in intercultural pedagogical theories as well as their inherent socio-cultural and egalitarian excesses.

Using the healthcare industry as a site of study, this project aims to uncover the conditions in which particular configurations of language proficiency and speakers become desired commodities, as the demands of globally mobile patients are managed, the needs of migrant patients are accommodated and the linguistic, symbolic and cultural capitals of healthcare workers are regulated and exchanged.

This literature review aims to present an overview of scientific research on the social, political and linguistic issues of language census by analysing international works conducted in various sociopolitical and sociolinguistic contexts. The purpose is to highlight the complexity of documenting languages as required for each census when quantifying information on respondents’ language practices.

The directors of the roughly seventy administrative units at the Swiss Federal Administration are responsible for ensuring that the prevailing rules regarding linguistic representation are upheld (in accordance with the Languages Act, the Languages Ordinance and directives on multilingualism). Persons in such influential positions have a certain amount of discretionary power and can thus have a major impact on the adequate representation of linguistic groups and the promotion of multilingualism...