Language requirements and language testing for immigration and integration purposes

Abstract

The present document is the result of a literature-based study of recent developments in the field of language requirements and language testing for immigration and integration purposes. The study was carried out as part of the regular research programme 2011-2014 at the Swiss national Research Centre on Multilingualism (RCM)1. The introduction of language requirements and the use of formal language tests as prerequisites for obtaining entry visas, residence permits and/or citizenship are fairly recent but rapidly evolving practices in many Western countries, particularly in Europe. These requirements and assessments have been made the object of academic debate and research, and the subject of several scholarly publications. This report seeks to present a structured overview of several aspects of these requirements and assessments; the basis for our study is provided by a corpus of academic publications. The summary of literature put forward in this paper is divided into two main chapters. The first provides an overview of recent developments, mainly over the past decade, regarding language requirements for immigration, residency and naturalization; it also describes the introduction of new, formal assessments at different stages of the immigration process. Because the information presented is often based on accounts by academics critical of the new tendencies, this chapter also introduces several contested issues, primarily from a critical perspective. The second main chapter deals systematically with topics from the ongoing debate on language testing for immigration and integration purposes under consideration of major categories from assessment validation research, with Bachman & Palmer’s (2010) Assessment Use Argument (AUA) framework providing the conceptual background for our account. 1 | The authors would like to thank Severine Beaud Duarte Rodrigues for the great contribution she made to the collection and screening of academic publications in the early phase of the project. The valuable comments of our internal reviewer, Thomas Studer, made at different stages of the study are also greatly appreciated. Our study concludes with a series of recommendations for future assessment-related research, publications, and assessment validation practices. Overall, our findings confirm the subjectively perceived increase in language requirements and formal language testing (sometimes complemented by cultural knowledge testing) for immigration and integration purposes in several ’Western’ countries, particularly in Europe, over the past decade. Although a common general trend is discernible, we are also able to observe considerable diversity in the concrete definition of the requirements and the corresponding assessments, for instance, regarding the levels of language proficiency required. The analyses of the literature on the basis of Bachman and Palmer’s validation framework reveal that the published literature treats the various topics involved rather unevenly. In particular, only very few papers are actually aimed to systematically demonstrate (or challenge) the validity of a specific test and its use. Most papers deal with either the meaningfulness of test content and levels with respect to the knowledge and skills selected for assessment (typically ‘sufficient knowledge to integrate in society’) and the beneficence a test and the preparatory phase leading up to it hold for various stakeholders, or they raise questions about the testing of immigrants per se which are so fundamental in nature that they are only marginally accommodated by existing validation frameworks. In our conclusion, we make recommendations for future work concerning the following points: the inclusion of academic disciplines specialising in social, ethical and legal topics related to language testing for immigration and integration purposes; a commitment to accountability and systematic test validation within an up-to-date validation framework; the employment of needs analyses as a basis for test design and use; the need for more impact studies on test regimes; the desirability of more transparency concerning test validation and its outcomes.