Language and Citizenship Tests: Unsettling the habitus of trickster global coloniality

Abstract

Over the last 500 years, the project of global coloniality has manifested in various forms: overt, subtle, discursive, patrimonial, violent, nativist, culturally chauvinistic, jingoistic, patronising and exploitative. At other times, it has proceeded through elaborate processes seeking to invisibilise, marginalise and ultimately erase the cultural and ontological density of the non-desired other. These mutations are still ongoing today with language and citizenship testing regimes for migrants and refugees being the latest and most widely used technology for actuating global coloniality especially in Western liberal democracies such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the Netherlands, Britain and the United States. In this article, I draw attention to the subtle forms of global coloniality that are hidden behind the language of scientific 'objectivity', 'impartiality', and 'fairness' used to justify standardised language and citizenship testing for immigrants and prospective citizens. The argument is that although language proficiency tests are to a degree useful in informing measurement and assessment in a range of social and educational contexts, they do have a dark side that betrays hallmarks of coloniality of power. The conclusion is that language testing regimes emerged out of and are sustained by racio-linguistic ideologies that undergird the body-politic of contemporary Western societies such as Australia.