How does language policy impact immigration? Focusing on the case study of immigration in Québec, Canada, we will look at policies enacted over the past five or so decades that have implemented a point system favoring applicants who are from francophone countries or who are French speakers.

Join the conversation with Sonia Das, Ph.D., on how immigration policy complicates linguistic nationalist goals, and how language policy complicates targeted immigration goals, specifically for addressing labor shortages. Das discusses the narratives and lived experiences of Tamil immigrants impacted by these policies and their life trajectories and social mobility.

Sonia Das is a linguistic anthropologist at New York University who has studied migration in colonial and post-colonial settings, focusing on the language practices, ideologies, and policies that shape these experiences. Her first book, Linguistic Rivalries: Tamil Migrants and Anglo-Franco Conflicts, published by Oxford University Press in 2016, won Honorable Mention for the Sapir Book Prize in Linguistic Anthropology.