Multilingualism has been long seen as a challenge to modern statehood and nation building in Europe, in the light of a nationalist ideology envisioning a correspondence between state, territory, nation and language. As a result many states conducted linguistic homogenization policies in their territory and numerous nationalist projects justified territorial claims linguistically. Europe ideally appeared as a mosaic of monolingual nation states, where multilingual states were framed as exceptions or anomalies, and multilingual cities and regions as the expression of incomplete and imperfect borders.

Since World War II Europeanization and globalization challenge both existing monolingual ideologies and established bilingual arrangements to accommodate enduring situations of linguistic diversity. International migration and intra-EU mobility, trade and other global flows as well as European political integration brought new forms of multilingualism to the front through the presence of new linguistic groups in European cities and the increase of transnational interactions.

The submitted papers explore these new challenges at the level of European cities and of the Member States and compare them to earlier ones. More specifically they analyze ideologies, practices and arrangements regarding older and newer forms of  linguistic diversity and multilingualism.