8 - The Policy Community and Recommendations on New Speakers

Summary

Chapter 8 is concerned with the policy community and in making recommendations at international, state, regional and local levels. The first task is to refine the results of the study, the second is to determine a set of generic observations and the third is to present country-specific recommendations. Defining a recommendation and distinguishing it from mere wish fulfilment are by no means simple tasks and some recommendations available in the literature are so general that it is difficult to interpret their meaning with any degree of precision. That is why the recommendations should be realisable. The chapters offers a suite of generic recommendations suitable for consideration in many jurisdictions before moving on to suggest very specific recommendations for each of the eight case study jurisdictions investigated. A certain reticence in acknowledging the salience of these recommendations is particularly characteristic of international migrants, refugees and what are sometime called translational workers as national and local authorities will determine that their obligation is to provide instruction in each state”s dominant language so as to enable the residents to function within the “normal” parameters of the educational, health and social services. Accordingly, while the focus of the investigation is on the reception and adoption of the new speaker concept as an element in policy formulation, the narrative also seeks to strengthen the interpretation by providing additional information on the various contexts within which the investigation was undertaken.