What are the requirements for admission, for civic integration and for acquiring citizenship in nation-states across the world? Should a certain level of language proficiency be part of these requirements, and if so how should this be tested? This book addresses the urgent need to develop a fuller conceptual and theoretical basis for language testing and civic integration programmes than is currently available, to enable widespread discussion of this theme and its concomitant linguistic and socio-cultural requirements.

The pattern of migration to Europe has become more diversified over time and has raised many new questions regarding admission, civic integration and citizenship. The public and political discourses surrounding these issues are in flux and are generally moving in the direction of increasingly restrictive regimes across European nation-states.

Much longer histories of testing regimes than those available for Europe, and documented experiences in working with them, can be found in non-European contexts in which former European immigrants played a major role in establishing such regimes. It is with this rationale in mind that this Volume focuses on carefully selected European case studies without neglecting comparative views on non-European nation-states that are traditionally referred to as immigrant countries par excellence from an early European perspective of emigration.

The book aims to raise the general level of the discussion by taking into account cross-national developments and by promoting a more coherent and well-founded approach. It appeals to researchers and academics working in sociolinguistics, language education, and globalization studies, as well as to those involved in language policies and language planning.