The presentation is about current policy in the coordination of opportunities for adult migrants in England to learn English. People who move to a different country experience a need to learn the dominant language of their new environment, for employment, to access services, and generally to support their settlement. A willingness to learn English is a marker of social inclusion from a political perspective too, and an insistence that migrants have an obligation to learn and use the language is a recurrent trope in political and media discourse. In the UK, language education for adult migrants in practice and in policy focuses on the field known as ESOL, English for Speakers of Other Languages. Beyond the rhetoric, policy support for migrants’ learning of English across the UK is inconsistent: there is neither a UK-wide strategy in policy to support the provision of, and access to, ESOL, nor an England-specific one. In my talk I consider how this important area of adult education appears to have no place in national education policy, and the implications of this, for practice. First, I trace the recent trajectory of ESOL policy in England. Through an examination of key policy documents, I show that despite sustained attempts to address its coordination there remains a lacuna. Second, I ask what the implications are of this policy gap for ESOL coordination in practice. Analysis of a set of interviews with key ESOL stakeholders suggests an enduring condition of fragmentation and lack of coordination to the detriment of students. Ultimately, I challenge established accounts of policy formation at macro/meso/micro scale as being inadequate for ESOL. I propose instead an understanding of policy as grassroots or rhizomatic, with an example from Yorkshire & the Humber.  

James Simpson is Associate Professor in Humanities at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, where he carries out research in language and migration. Previously he worked in the School of Education, University of Leeds, for many years. His books include Translanguaging as Transformation (Multilingual Matters, 2020, with Emilee Moore and Jessica Bradley), Adult Language Education and Migration (Routledge, 2015, with Anne Whiteside), The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics (Routledge, 2011), and ESOL: A Critical Guide (OUP, 2008, with Melanie Cooke). He coordinates the Belonging Research Network in Hong Kong, manages the online discussion forum ESOL-Research, and until recently was Chair of Trustees of MESH, a charity which supports adult migrant language education in Yorkshire and the Humber.