Compounding forms of inequality: Cape Verdean migrants’ struggles in education and beyond in Luxembourg

1 Introduction

This paper addresses specific moments of struggles concerning mobility and language of residents of Cape Verdean background in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, which is a small state at the heart of Europe and one of the richest countries in the world (Fehlen 2009). Within the EU, Luxembourg has the highest proportion of foreign residents, mostly other EU citizens, forming almost half (47,9 %) of its population (Statec 2017). It is often compared economically and socially with its three neighbouring countries – France, Belgium and Germany – from where most of its everyday labour force hails, i. e. the cross-border workers, who form 48 % of the country’s workforce (de Bres 2014; Franziskus and De Bres 2015; Powell et al. 2017). Today, the largest migrant group in Luxembourg hails from Portugal (16.4 % of the country’s residents), followed byFrance, Italy,Belgium,Germany, former Yugoslavia, Cape Verde, China, Brazil, the USA,Canada,andseveralAfricancountries(Scuto 2010; Statec 2017).

As concerns languages, the Grand Duchy is officially a trilingual country, where German, French and Luxembourgish are the officially recognised languages. Yet, given the substantive migration and cross-border mobility mentioned above, the linguistic regime is complex and has been changing over decades. For instance, “Portuguese has become one of the most widely spoken languages [...], although it does not enjoy any legal safeguards” (Sharma 2018: 87). More recently, as a result of globalisation and EU institutions, the use of English has gained currency in many sectors (de Bres and Franziskus 2014; de Bres 2015; Pigeron-Piroth and Fehlen 2015). Luxembourg is constantly celebrated in various arenas of polity as a multilingual country par excellence (Horner 2011). Its multilingualism is also deemed to be one of its sources of wealth (N. Weber 2000). However, the enthusiasm for multilingualism from different perspectives, actors and sectors of society, may erase several layers of complexity in which language is embedded in migrants’ struggles. Cape Verdean migrants and their descendants in Luxembourg compose one of the social groups that struggle with official multilingualism from primary to higher education, as will be shown below.

Theoretically, the paper intends to engage sociolinguistics with insights from anthropology of mobility/migration by shedding light on complex manifestations of inequality and marginality which language impinges upon. The paper focusses on migrants whose status and their other indicators of identity, to a certain extent, contribute to magnify their struggles. Drawing on participant observations and interviews, the paper will illustrate this from the ground-level educational realities and aspirations of Cape Verdean migrants and their descendants in Luxembourg. Cape Verdeans form the second largest migrant group from outside EU and Europe and they have a long history of migration (since 1960s) and marginalization, occupying the lowest rungs of society and jobs, and they are positioned at the top of education failure in Luxembourg (cf. Jacobs et al. 2017).

The following section recounts Cape Verdean migration to Luxembourg. Section 3 theorises the links between migration, language and inequality. Section 4 presents the data and the methodology used to generate them. Section 5 gives an overview of language-in-education policy in Luxembourg. Section 6 addresses lived experiences, showcasing the struggles of two young women and a middle-aged man in their educational attainments. Lastly, Section 7 compares the case studies, concludes the paper and points to further directions.

2 Cape Verdean migration to Luxembourg

Cape Verdean migration to Luxembourg started indirectly via Portuguese colonisation. Portugal is the European country with the largest number of Cape Verdean migrants (Batalha and Carling 2008). Cape Verde was a Portuguese settlement colony from the 15^th century until 1975 when it became an independent nation. Many Cape Verdeans migrated to Portugal from the mid-1960s to the 1980 s. At that time, there was a huge demand for labour in Luxembourg. Luxembourg was attracting Portuguese Gastarbeiter ‘foreign workers’ to come and work in construction, mainly, as the influx of Italian Gastarbeiter began to decline. Contracts of labour force between Portugal and Luxembourg were signed. As Cape Verdeans held the status of Portuguese citizens at that time, they started to re-emigrate from Portugal to Luxembourg (Laplanche and Vanderkam 1991). However, later on, the Luxembourgish government and the Portuguese fascist government signed an agreement to stop Cape Verdean migration to Luxembourg. The Luxembourgish government stipulated in the revised labour contract that they allowed only portugais de souche ‘native Portuguese’ (Laplanche and Vanderkam 1991: 38; Jacobs et al. 2017: 13). Thus, at that point it was made explicit that race and ethnicity were key elements of migration. After that, Cape Verdeans (i. e. overseas Portuguese before 1975) who came did so via family reunification or crossed borders clandestinely.

More recently, since the economic crash of 2008, there has been an intensification of Cape Verdean re-emigration from Portugal to other European countries, including Luxembourg (Pereira 2012). This Cape Verdean re-migration pattern is composed mostly of those holding Portuguese citizenship which facilitates their mobility within Europe and beyond. Among them, some young and middle-aged migrants hold higher education degrees, having studied and/or lived in Portugal (and other EU countries) for decades. All these factors have significantly contributed to the increase of Cape Verdean presence in Luxembourg. Although reliable numbers are missing, estimates of Cape Verdean migrants in Luxembourg vary between 2,855 (Statec 2017), and 8,000 or even 12,000 according to various sources (Tavares and Juffermans 2020). Direct mobility from Cape Verde to Luxembourg is ongoing but under tightened restrictions. Yet Cape Verdeans form the largest group of African migrants in Luxembourg (Statec 2017).

Jacobs et al. (2017), as the first report fully dedicated to Cape Verdean diaspora in Luxembourg, insightfully portray unfavourable scenarios regarding those migrants. This report recognisesthedifficultsituationofCapeVerdeanmigrants in social and juridicalterms, especiallycomparedto EU and other non-EUmigrant groups (Americans,Chinese,etc.). The report highlights that education,trainingandemploymentareimportantindicatorsofsocial mobility;however, migrants (Cape Verdean migrants and other migrants from the global South)facedifficultiesingettingtheircertificatesrecognised. It shows that Cape Verdeans in Luxembourg have occupied the bottom level strata of education, employment and society (see also dos Santos Rocha 2010; Manço et al. 2014; Gerstnerova 2016; Tavares 2018).

3 Migration, language and inequality

In this era characterised by globalisation, “the term immigrant has technically been used to refer to a person who enters or settles in a region or state to which he or she is not native, but the general understanding the word has acquired is more specific, namely, a person from the developing world settling in [a] more developed area, typically in the Western world” (Duchêne et al. 2013: 6). The use of the term immigrant (or migrant) is a reflection of power relations between nation-states, between individuals living in those nation-states and the Global South-North divide. For instance, there are many Americans living in other countries, but they are hardly referred to and written about in academia, media, political discourses, reports, etc. as American immigrants, similarly to most Europeans (especially Northern and Western Europeans) living and working outside their native countries. Whereas there are many Cape Verdeans, for instance, living in the USA and European countries, where they are referred to as immigrants. Curiously, there are many Portuguese natives living in American and Northern European countries where they too are mostly referred to as immigrants, similarly to Cape Verdeans and other Africans in the Global North. This may be due to the fact that a large number of those Portuguese migrants are employed in menial labour, but it may also be due to the ‘semi-peripheral’ position of Portugal (Santos 2002) in the modern world-system hierarchy.

Moreover, descendants born in a host country are socially perceived as not fully-belonging subjects, and often legally treated as their migrant parents. Note that this can generally apply to migration regimes of many countries in the Global North with some nuances according to context. Whereas, even if there is a large population of immigrants from the Global North living in other countries for work or diverse reasons, they are usually referred to as communities, skilled workers, expats, etc. – i. e. words with positive connotations – distancing themselves from the term immigrants (see also Yeung 2016). The term immigrant has gained such a pejorative connotation that it is almost exclusively reserved for people moving from poor and powerless countries, from the Global South to the Global North. Inequalities are indeed salient in any migration context, starting in the way newcomers are addressed (Tavares and Juffermans 2020). The sheer fact of being born in a geographical area of the globe, and/or speaking certain languages, having a specific accent and skin colour, attending certain kinds of educational spaces, rituals and religions, entitles or denies people access to resources and to certain parts of the world. Indeed, a lot of people on earth are somehow “stuck” before, in or after mobility (Baynham 2013: 274). This inequalities of mobility led Carling (2002) to assert that we do not so much live in times of hypermobility but simultaneously in the ‘era of involuntary immobility’ with unmatched mobile aspirations and mobile capacities for a large number of people.

As soon as one leaves one’s country of origin, one loses or gains certain rights and duties. Indeed, the territoriality of one’s body first appearance marks one’s life in terms of struggles and privileges over mobility, multilingualism, knowledge and power (Tavares and Juffermans 2020). Migration and mobility of citizens around the globe pose important challenges to the linguistic and cultural homogeneity that nation-states still rely on for defining their physical boundaries, their language and identity as well as rights and obligations of their citizens (Duchêne et al. 2013) and non-citizens, i. e. immigrants. Language in motion can potentially gain or lose value along the journey with its speaker/s (Horner and Dailey-O’Cain 2020). It is not a question of having diversified multilingual repertoires, the point is to be associated with the right multilingualism in a particular place. “In many contexts and geographical spaces, there are new demands on competence in the dominant language. But in many other spaces, single language speakers no longer can get by in their local daily lives in the same way as they did in the past. Here multilingualism and knowledge of more than one language have become almost a requirement” (Duchêne et al. 2013: 2).

Obviously, not every speaker and not every multilingual repertoire has the same value everywhere and at all times (Duchêne 2019). Depending on the context, some kinds of multilingualism can be regarded as an asset while others are deemed to be a problem. Only ‘elite multilingualism’ – officially recognised – (Garrido 2017; Barakos and Selleck 2019) tends to be valued since they serve the interests of those in power; whereas ‘societal multilingualism’ (de Bres 2014), i. e. multilingualism resulting from mobility and migration, tends to be devalued and in many cases perceived as a threat (Weber 2009; de Bres 2014). Thus, speakers of the latter form of multilingualism are marginalised, creating a pool of what can be called ‘multilinguals on the margins.’ These multilinguals on the margins are normally those individuals who have stepped outside of their ‘comfort zone of home’, i. e. migrants, who have to unequally struggle and are often forced to take ‘survival employment’ (Piller 2016) irrespective of their educational qualifications. Migration can empower and disempower people. Similarly, multilingualism can empower or disempower people. Language itself may constitute a resource, barrier or even site of struggle in the broader sociolinguistic field (Horner and Dailey-O’Cain 2020).

Yet, migrants’ survival in a host country does not depend solely on the congruence between their linguistic repertoire and the host country’s official self-image as a monolingual or multilingual country. Beyond migrants’ actual qualifications and language repertoires, boundaries are frequently reified by other essentialist notions of identity which impact on the lives of people across the globe. Linguistic barriers do not, or rarely, operate in isolation, “rather, language intersects with other forms of disadvantage or privilege” (Piller 2016: 73). Language can be another piece of the puzzle since it often comes combined with other linguistic and non-linguistic indicators of ethnicity such as accent, name, race, age, gender and country of origin. As Horner and Dailey-O’Cain (2020: 14) put it, “language is part and parcel of these processes, albeit in diverse and complex ways that vary across situational contexts. But issues about language are never about language alone and link to broader social, economic and political matters”. Nonetheless, acceptable ways of speaking seem to be often and independently “valued over a person’s actual qualifications or job experience” (Duchêne et al. 2013: 13). Nowadays, language requirements are omnipresent and legally circumscribed in most domains of society, and are highly linked to inequality as well as economic, political and social exclusion.

4 Methodology and data

The data under consideration in this paper derives from a research project conducted between 2014 and 2017 at the University of Luxembourg. It was a multi-sited ethnographic (Marcus 1995) sociolinguistic project on Cape Verdean and Bissau-Guinean migration trajectories to Luxembourg. However, here in this paper, I am reporting only on Cape Verdean trajectories. In general, the methodology consisted in following people through face-to-face interactions – interviews and participant observations – and digital communication, e. g. Facebook and telephone (in both their country of origin and their host country). Here, I draw on participant observations and interviews I had with three participants – Jorge, Carmen and Dominique^[1] – in 2014 and 2017. Dominique and Carmen are two young women (in their 30s). While Dominique was born to Cape Verdean parents in France, Carmen was born in Cape Verde, both of them had almost all their primary and secondary education in Luxembourg. I was introduced to them by a student assistant of the project as I asked her to put me in contact with some ‘second-generation’ Cape Verdeans in Luxembourg. Jorge is a middle-aged man who came to Luxembourg after finishing his high school in Cape Verde. I first met him in an Cape Verdean ethnic shop in Luxembourg, one of the key field sites of the project.

I chose these three participants on the basis of their gender, different age of migration and educational trajectories; exploring the intersection of these identity elements can cast light on our understanding of their struggles with multilingualism and their social positionings. We had open-ended interviews in which they reported on their migration trajectories, their sociolinguistic life, their job, and educational interactions in the school environment and beyond in Luxembourg. They also shared their views about other migrants of Cape Verdean origin in Luxembourg. The excerpts^[2] presented below are chosen in light of their insight in making us reflect on the role of language in educational settings in which being a migrant or having a migrant background is an intrinsic and/or additional factor of facing struggles. This helps understand the effects of the official multilingualism in reproducing inequalities and how this multilingualism hampers Cape Verdean migrants’ social and economic mobility. Before entering into the discussion of the three participants’ trajectories and management of their struggles in the officially trilingual Luxembourg, I will first give a brief overview of language-in-education policy in Luxembourg.

5 Language-in-education policy in Luxembourg

Education is a core space in considerations of language as it is the local institution most implicated in the distribution of social and cultural capital, while language is the principal means whereby this distribution is accomplished and reinforced (Hyltestam and Stroud 2016). When the educational system was set up in nineteenth century Luxembourg, Luxembourgish was perceived rather as a dialect of German than a language. Traditionally, French and German were used for written functions as the administrative languages (de Bres 2015). However, the Language Law of 1984 proclaimed Luxembourgish as the ‘national language’ (Weber & Horner 2012). According to Garcia (2014: 114), this was “to a certain extent the result of an intense mobilisation campaign by the language promotion association Actioun Lëtzebuergesch (AL) created in 1971”. Thus, Luxembourgish officially became another administrative language together with French and German, forming the current official language trinity of Luxembourg.

From 1984 onwards, the language-in-education policy has only suffered marginal changes, despite the substantive migration mentioned above. In pre-school, called Cycle 1 (children from 3 to 5 years old), Luxembourgish has been the medium of instruction, though children have recently started to be introduced to spoken French as well through a progressive approach. German remains the language of literacy at the national level, it is the vehicular language during the primary education, i. e. from Cycle 2 to Cycle 4 (6 to 11 years old). This means that children first learn to read and write in German since that is the teaching language for all subjects. Children begin learning written French (as another subject) in Cycle 3 (from 8 to 9 years old). The use of German-literacy, associated with other issues like ethnicity and race, has led to school failure and drop-out of many Romance-speaking students. As an alternative, despite the economic costs and distance, some parents send their children to school in France and Belgium, usually close to the borders (Fehlen 2002; Horner and Weber 2008; Jacobs et al. 2017; Decamps and Monthéard 2020). Children of Cape Verdean and Portuguese migrants compose the majority of these cross-border students from Luxembourg (Jacobs et al. 2017). Other parents, with more financial resources, opt for private schools which do not usually follow the national curriculum, however, demanding very high fees (MENJE 2016; European Commission 2018).

The transition to secondary education is complex. Some years ago, secondary education was divided into three tracks: the Classique (the more prestigious one), the Technique and the Modulaire (the least prestigious one). For decades, given compulsory German literacy in primary education, the Classique track has been disproportionally attended by native-born students compared with students of Romance-speaking background, which now compose almost half of the school population in Luxembourg ( Weber 2007; Muller et al. 2020). And, while hardly any Romance-speaking students manage to enter the Classique track, it is the most popular track for native-born (Horner and Weber 2008; Weber and Horner 2012; Sharma 2018). More recently, the secondary tracks were renamed as such:

1. Classique secondary education: for those students who acquired excellent results in both French and German in primary education.

2. General secondary education: a convergence of the former Technique and Modulaire tracks which is further subdivided as follows: a) Guidance – for those students who acquired necessary skills in primary education. Except maths, which is taught in French, all the subjects are taught in German in the lower classes of this stream, English is introduced in the 2^nd year; and b) Preparatory – for those students who did not acquire sufficient skills in primary education. All subjects are taught in German, except maths which is in French, but English is not included in their programme. Depending on their abilities, in the upper classes, students can continue in the General secondary stream in higher education, or be oriented to the Vocational training stream, in which most of the subjects are taught in German and some are in French (for more information concerning the structure of the secondary education see the website men.public.lu).^[3]

Some scholars who are concerned with creating a more equitable and fair educational system have suggested the opening of a French-literacy track alongside the German one in the public primary school system (Fehlen 2002; Horner and Weber 2008; Weber 2009; Weber and Horner 2012; Weber 2014). According to Muller et al. (2020: 188), this would better fit the social reality of Luxembourg’s school population, which is composed of two major groups: “on the one hand, autochthonous Luxembourgish students who tend to speak Luxembourgish as (one of) their home language(s) and, on the other hand, non-Luxembourgish students who speak Romance languages at home, as they or their (grand) parents have moved to Luxembourg from countries such as Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Romania, the Cape Verdean Islands and especially from Portugal”.

In order to tackle those challenges, the Ministry of Education opened the Ecole international de Differdange (Differdange international school) in 2016. It is a state-funded multilingual school in the south of the country. This school offers French, German and English medium-of-instruction tracks, “which [is] more in line with the heterogeneity of contemporary Luxembourgish society, and hence as a model for a more equitable future” (Muller et al. 2020: 193). In addition, the Ministry has also opened three other public international schools: Lënster Lycée in Junglinster, Lycée Edward Steichen in Clervaux and Ecole international de Mondorf-les-Bains ‘Mondorf-les-Bains international school.’^[4] This is also seen as a way for parents to avoid sending their children to study in Belgium or France (Decamps and Monthéard 2020), as mentioned above. Thus, the first steps for a more equitable education system have been taken, however, there remain many challenges and a long way to go. For, unfortunately, as Simpson and Whiteside (2015: 2) put it, migration across the states usually “outpace[s] the development of policies and infrastructure which address the presence of new migrants and the linguistic diversity that their arrival entails”.

6 Cape Verdeans’ struggles in education and beyond in Luxembourg

I will now focus on the life trajectories and experiences of language struggles of the key participants presented in this paper – Dominique, Carmen and Jorge – residents of Cape Verdean background who have lived in Luxembourg for over a decade. All of them now hold Luxembourgish citizenship. To a certain extent, their stories may be regarded successful for integration, but they have struggled with language and social prejudice related to their migrant background even if they were/are highly and partly multilingual persons in the three official languages. This echoes Duchêne’s (2019) assertion that, ‘multilingualism [is] an insufficient answer to sociolinguistic inequalities’.

7 Comparison, discussion and conclusion

In this paper, I have presented mobile and language struggles in educational arenas of three residents of Cape Verdean origin in the officially trilingual Luxembourg: two women in their thirties – Dominique and Carmen; and one man in his forties – Jorge. By now, all of them hold Luxembourgish citizenship, but they have had different migration trajectories to Luxembourg. On the one hand, the two women had similar migration trajectories – family relocation from France and reunification from Cape Verde, respectively – into Luxembourg. They both came at an early age, and thus, they experienced the same educational system, but with different outcomes in terms of success and insertion into the labour market. They both had German, which is the least used official language outside the classroom and in society in general, as their language of literacy (see Decamps and Monthéard 2020). They faced similar challenges in the educational system, but one more than other: Dominique managed to succeed and her teacher strongly supported her; while Carmen managed less well and had a teacher who did not like her, but she managed to make a living nonetheless. Beyond schooling, they had differences in the type of jobs they held and requirements for those jobs: Dominique became a French teacher (a highly qualified job), while Carmen became a caregiver (less qualified job). German competence played a key role on these outcomes.

On the other hand, Jorge, who had a different educational and migration trajectory to Luxembourg, faced challenges derived from his migrant conditions and a devaluation of his linguistic repertoire and diploma in his attempts to enter higher education. He managed it almost a decade later, but in France. As mentioned above, France and Belgium have long been alternative educational arenas, in diverse ways, for Cape Verdean migrants and their descendants in Luxembourg (Fehlen 2002; Horner and Weber 2008; Jacobs et al. 2017; Decamps and Monthéard 2020). These cases shed light on how Cape Verdean migrants and their descendants whether or not born in Luxembourg struggle in many sectors of their lives, with education the most influential space of struggle given the centrality of it in people’s lives.

Dominique’s and Carmen’s interactions in the school system index how fragile migrant children can be in educational settings in the host country. This is similar to other groups of migrants, more notably, other African migrant groups.^[7] Dominique and Carmen had a very different educational trajectory compared to Jorge, but all of them have suffered from combined stigmas of having a migrant background and lacking proficiency in German, which is positioned as “the norm to which all national subjects should aspire [...] regardless of whether anyone actually adheres to those norms in practice” (Flores and Rosa 2015: 151). Their cases have also shown that multilingualism is not always sufficient and that multilingualism is not just multilingualism, other aspects of a person’s identity may count more or less than their multilingual repertoire, even when language is loosely declared to be the root cause. Yet, one may be highly multilingual in various languages, including official languages, but low proficiency in one official language seems to make one feel ‘stuck’ (Baynham 2013) as Jorge’s case shows well.

It may seem paradoxical to present three apparently successful cases of residents of Cape Verdean background in order to display migrants’ and their descendants’ struggles in the school system and later labour market insertion in Luxembourg. However, it is important to explore the whole process behind their success or lack thereof. It is evident that Dominique, Carmen and Jorge have had different levels of success, but all of them have struggled, in different ways, in settings and encounters in and with the officially trilingual Luxembourg, entangled with the societal perception of their identity based on their race and ethnicity, linguistic repertoire, and for being migrants or descendants thereof. They have managed to sustain a living and proved to be resilient to social positionings and language requirements (especially German) which have real-life consequences, although, relatively, with more positive effects in Dominique’s case than in Carmen’s or Jorge’s.

Large numbers of migrant children start to experience inequality early with the German-literacy system that is enforced on them, in which Luxembourgish or Germanophone students are at an advantage (Weber 2007; Sharma 2018). As Dominique’s and Carmen’s narratives particularly show, parental inability to help their children do homework, their low social strata per se, their positioning in unskilled and usually low-skilled and poorly-paid job sectors, and the devaluation of their multilingual repertoire (as in Jorge’s case) factor in compounding their challenges. In addition, there are teachers’ and other school stakeholders’ attitudes towards migrant students, as Dominique’s and Carmen’s different experiences show. As Goldstein (1997: 233) puts it, drawing on Freire (1970)’s central premise, “education is not neutral and the interaction of teacher and student does not take place in vacuum” for good or for bad. The language-in-education policy in Luxembourg saliently indexes the notion that language is not only a means of communication; it is also ‘an instrument of power’ (Bourdieu 1991; Fehlen 2002). Dominique’s and Carmen’s narratives, in particular about their navigation within this system, index that students of Cape Verdean background (or, more generally, romanophone students) may suffer a strong impact of individual and institutionalised discrimination in the school language policies and in the heterogeneity of contemporary Luxembourgish society. Fortunately for Dominique, the language policy did not jeopardise her aspirations much. Though she succeeded, it does not mean that others also will, as we saw in Carmen’s case. Finally, positive steps have been taken in order to have more equitable education opportunities with the opening of some public international schools in which students can choose between German, French or English as the language of literacy.

Jorge’s case shows us that some migrants come to Luxembourg because of the official multilingualism of Luxembourg, as mentioned earlier in this paper, i. e. Jorge came partly because he was highly multilingual (in French, English, Portuguese and Cape Verdean Creole) prior his migration to Luxembourg, as part of his job in Cape Verde. Yet, Dominique’s, Carmen’s and Jorge’s cases also show us that Luxembourg’s official multilingualism – French, German and Luxembourgish – can pose mixed feelings for certain migrants. Migrants whose repertoire corresponds, at least, to one of these official languages may navigate their lives in Luxembourg but will need to be resilient. Those whose repertoire is distant from all the three official languages may fear migrating to Luxembourg if their repertoire does not include at least English (as a global language and highly valued in Luxembourg). However, not all ‘Englishes’– and English speakers – are valued in the same way (e. g. a Canadian English speaker is not valued as a Nigerian English speaker). Thus, all these assumptions are not straightforward, since the country of origin of the migrant, their race and ethnicity, individual capacity and spirit of resilience further play key roles as well, as the three cases show. One should not forget that a society that brands itself as multilingual can be just as exclusionary and oppressive to foreign-born/migrant-descended and racialised speakers as one that is strictly monolingual. For, multilingualism is also an ideological regime that produces difference and potential inequalities (Duchêne 2019).

Applied and anthropological linguists, as well as sociolinguists, have much to offer not only by addressing serious social inequalities imbricated with language, but also in helping to redress them from the bottom-up. Even so, because I am quite certain that we should be conscious of how language is pretty much implicated (both as a cause and excuse) in maintaining the privileges of those citizens who are seen as ideal for Luxembourg’s self-image as a European multilingual country. I believe that social resilience channelled through collective action movements will lead to beneficial turning-points. Drawing on Massey (2007) in their attempt to unveil root causes of migrants’ struggles in the United States, Aysa-Lastra and Cachón (2015: 10) have shown that struggles of “individuals or social groups [have their] foundation in the holy trinity of inequality: class, race and ethnicity, and gender. Frequently, these inequalities are combined and create additional interactive and multiplicative negative effects”. For the context of the officially trilingual Luxembourg, it can be suggested that there is a holy quadruple of inequality by adding one more element – language. This element is so engrained in processing inequalities that in several cases it retains the strongest impact. The data presented above exemplify how language is the fourth element that is often mobilised discursively when the other three are politically incorrect – and this can happen in both officially monolingual and multilingual contexts.