Monolingual Politics in a Multilingual Society? The Case of Luxembourg

Through a socio-historical perspective of politics, this article analyses the dynamics of the mobilization around the Luxembourgish language in a context marked by an increased presence of immigrants in the 1980. Drawing on a diversity of empirical sources (press archives, parliamentary debates, interviews), it shows how the institutionalization of Luxembourgish as national langue through law in 1984 leads to strengthen the link between skills in this language and access to political rights. Through the case of Luxembourg, the article raises the more general question of the influence of a democratic norm, linked to the monolingual nation-state model, on contemporary plurilingual societies.