'Makers, advocates, and users of language policy as co-creators of sociolinguistic research: onward migrants in London' is a Policy Support project funded by the Research England funds from the University of Westminster running from March until July 2022. The Principal Investigator is Petros Karatsareas, and the Co-Investigators are Vally Lytra (Goldsmiths University of London), Adriana Patiño-Santos (University of Southampton) and Emmanouil Pratsinakis (University of Oxford). Research Fellow is Yara Evans and Research Associates are Peter Browning, Rexhina Ndoci and Giulia Pepe.
This project will establish the linguistic challenges that onward migrants (OMs) face in their everyday lives, the linguistic needs that they have, and the extent to which these are known to and met by existing policy makers and policy advocates.
The project team will work closely with the external partners identified above as well as with focus groups of OMs to produce a policy brief and a research agenda. The policy brief will summarise research findings and provide recommendations for closing the gaps in linguistic support that may currently exist; ways to reach OMs as particular subsets of citizens whose languages are often ignored or rejected by society; and, anticipated benefits of doing so.
The research agenda will identify specific avenues for further investigation into the link between language and onward migration, including funding opportunities, and details on how the working relationship between the project team and the external partners will be developed in the future.