Multilingualism in education in cosmopolitan cities: Insights into LUCIDE network research

In the current climate of increased influx of migrants into European countries, understanding how to engage with diversity in order to utilize it as a resource is becoming essential for supporting inclusion in education and society. Schools are often first sites of intercultural experiences for children and young people recently arrived to a host country. Educators and other professionals in public services facilitating equality of opportunity and equality of access for diverse school communities often lack opportunities to develop skills and insights relevant to new everyday challenges. The LUCIDE (Languages in Urban Settings for Inclusion and Diversity in Europe) network of research partners was established with the aim to provide insights and develop guidance that would support institutions (schools, councils, universities, hospitals) and local and national economies to gain better understanding of complexities involved in providing services in highly diverse contexts. LUCIDE consisted of 16 partners based in 13 European cities (two in London) and two cities outside of Europe. All partners had pre-existing activities focused on researching and promoting multilingualism within urban contexts of different types. Some cities in the LUCIDE network have had multilingualism as an integral part of their functioning over a long period throughout centuries of their history, while others started experiencing it as a recent impact of new patterns of migration. The European city partners were Athens, Dublin, Hamburg, Limassol, London, Madrid, Osijek, Oslo, Rome, Sofia, Strasbourg, Utrecht, and Varna. The two outof-Europe partners were Ottawa and Melbourne. This feature in the London Review of Education brings to its readers papers from four LUCIDE partner cities: Limassol, Rome, Strasbourg, and Ottawa (with the latter’s research here comparing the services in Montreal and Vancouver). These papers have been selected to provide insights into new explorations of multilingualism in cosmopolitan cities. The term ‘cosmopolitan cities’ is used to place the emphasis on a positive approach to diversity stemming from the premise that diversity is a resource for individuals and societies. The LUCIDE network directly built upon the LETPP (Languages in Europe: Theory, Policy and Practice) project, funded in 2010 by the EU Lifelong Learning Programme. The LETPP vision was that multilingual cities would be trailblazing new ways to approach and utilize diversity. The LUCIDE network proposal aimed to extend the aims and delivery of this project, and was developed and funded by the European Commission Lifelong Learning Programme from December 2011 to November 2014. Its main activities were to carry out research as the basis for developing guidelines for multilingual cities relating to the following five spheres: