A Sociolinguistic Division of Labour
Nationalist policies and international politics inform the economic value and social capital attributed to varieties of Tamil taught as different heritage languages in Indian and Sri Lankan community schools and across French and English-medium public schools in Montreal, Quebec. In reimagining the local sociolinguistic division of labour between francophone and anglophone educational domains, Indian immigrants and Sri Lankan refugees pursue alternative sources of funding and institutional partnerships to implement two distinct heritage language education curricula in this city. Sri Lankans seek to preserve a literary style of Tamil to serve as a repository of their patrimony and validate claims of cultural authenticity, whereas Indians seek to modernize colloquial styles of Tamil that promise them access to new markets, facilitate speakers’ mobility, and affirm their claims of global modernity. Articulating these different valuations of a minority language exposes the competitive and collaborative dynamics of neoliberalism.