New project: Industrial Relations in Multilingual Environments at Work (IR-MultiLing)

IR-MultiLing will research areas of understanding/misunderstanding and intended/unintended outcomes arising from language policy choices and whether the costs and benefits of linguistic diversity map differently for employers and managers than for employees.

Viola Zentai and Zsuzsanna Arendas at the Center for Policy Studies take part in a 243,000 EUR research grant awarded by the Directorate General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion for the two-year study of the growing presence of multilingualism at work: how multilingualism influences the behaviors of trade unions and human resource managers, what are the intended/unintended outcomes arising from language policy choices and whether the costs and benefits of linguistic diversity map differently for employers, managers and employees. Researching with case studies in France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Spain and the UK, the project will develop a typology of multilingual work environments contrasting multinational and national/local organizations with different management and non-management linguistic experiences. The consortium is led by the Working Lives Research Institute of London Metropolitan University.