Conclusion to the Special Issue on language analysis and assessment in European border regimes: Expertise, language ideologies and lines of resistance

Abstract

The contributions to this Special Issue “Language Analysis and Assessment (LAA) in European Border Regimes: Current Trends and Controversies” document and critically interrogate a broad range of LAA practices. These span from LADO reports and language testing to AI-based dialect recognition, showing that LAA does not constitute a set of neutral instruments but of institutionally embedded bordering practices through which belonging, identity, and legitimacy are produced and delimited. In this concluding paper, we as guest editors discuss key findings of the contributions to the Special Issue. We focus on three closely intertwined aspects, which arise as a common thread in all contributions: the construction and instrumentalisation of expertise , persistent language ideologies, and possibilities for resistance. We then propose that the persistent appeal to LAA rests on a conflation of expertise, language ideologies, and technology ideologies: doubts, ambiguities, and contextual complexities are systematically rendered invisible, while responsibility is outsourced to human experts and algorithmic tools. In this respect, the more recent phenomenon of algorithmisation of LAA emerges as an intensification rather than a resolution of LAA’s epistemic and political flaws. The contributions do not merely call for improving models, techniques and legal application frameworks for LAA, but fundamentally question its ethical and scientific legitimacy. We identify sites of resistance ranging from professional refusal and counter-expertise to critical sociolinguistic intervention in academic, legal, and technological domains. In this vein, we understand this Special Issue as a critical intervention in itself.