WP351 Language teachers amidst increasing insecuritisation: Concepts, experiences, practical actions

In what ways are language teachers being affected by intensifying anti-immigrant rhetoric and the rise of the far right?  And what practical strategies can they develop to resist the growing hostility and suspicion around them?  Questions like these call for three interwoven lines of response.  In no particular order: (a) we need maps of the terrain in which we are encountering these developments, helping us to place particular events, experiences and actions in a broader perspective; (b) we need to start formulating practical strategies for action in the particular situations where we find ourselves; and (c) we need to ensure that language teachers themselves participate in these tasks as fully as possible.  To take this effort forward, this paper draws on two workshops with teachers in 2025 (c.30 participants in May and >40 in November).  First, it constructs a map of processes affecting teachers and students in schools, colleges and communities by introducing ‘(in)securitisation’, a notion that it sets next to standardisation and marketisation, two other major influences on education.  Second, it presents a list – co-authored with the teachers in May – of 20 strategic actions to resist the hostility at large.  Third, across all this, it seeks to (re)articulate at least some of the perceptions and ideas expressed by workshop participants.  The paper ends with an ‘Executive Summary’ that may be useful in wider dissemination