Do Immigrants have a Moral Duty to Learn the Host Society’s Language?

Abstract

In many Western countries, the host society expects immigrants to learn the official language and often reacts in severe ways if they do not. One of the normative questions that arise in this context is whether immigrants have a moral duty to learn the host society’s language. The paper evaluates the four most promising arguments for why immigrants might have such a duty: respect towards the host society; the unavoidability of communication situations involving duties; the duty to avoid becoming reliant on assistance from the welfare system; and a contract between the host society and immigrants. The paper argues that only the third and the fourth arguments support a moral obligation, and that they do so subject to several conditions and only for particular groups of immigrants.

Introduction

In most Western countries, the host society expects immigrants to learn the official language, or, if there are several, one of them. This is to a certain extent a natural expectation, because it accords with what most immigrants want to do in any case: usually, those who live within a certain territory want to be able to communicate with the people in their environment and therefore will quickly acquire some corresponding language skills.

However, sometimes immigrants do not conform to these expectations. Some immigrants focus on social relationships with other immigrants who speak one of the languages they are familiar with. Others pursue a profession that only requires knowledge of some international language. Still others feel too old to learn a new language—especially among those who were forced to emigrate at a more advanced age there are some who just want to live in safety without aspiring to build a new social life.

Host states and host societies often react severely to immigrants who are reluctant or refuse to learn the official language. They are frequently disparaged in public debates (in German, the term ‘Integrationsverweigerer’ has become established as a pejorative term for someone who refuses to integrate); many countries have enacted laws that compel immigrants to attend publicly funded language classes or that make language skills a precondition for residence permits; and even public acceptance of deportations tends to vary depending on the language skills of those who are due to be deported.

All of these stances on the part of immigrants and on the part of host societies raise normative questions. One of them is whether immigrants or particular groups of immigrants have, in general,¹ a pro tanto moral duty to learn the host society’s language. The duty in question would be a pro tanto duty, because it could be overridden by numerous factors, relating for instance to mental health, age, cognitive capabilities or life circumstances on the part of the bearer of the duty. Moreover, such a duty would not necessarily prescribe a certain level that immigrants would have to achieve, since the extent to which one can acquire language skills depends on cognitive and educational conditions. However, it would at least require immigrants to make substantial efforts to learn the language.

Obviously, learning the language of the host society is not one of the basic duties of any moral theory. Hence, to determine whether such a duty exists, we must ask whether there is some other, more fundamental moral duty which, when applied to the specific circumstances of immigration into Western countries, implies that immigrants ought to learn the language.

In order to answer this question, I will take some general patterns exhibited by the circumstances of immigration into Western societies for granted. First, I will assume as a background condition that, although the host society may have a certain degree of linguistic diversity, the official language² shapes communication with state institutions as well as communication in most areas of public and professional life.³ Furthermore, I will assume that the immigrants under discussion do not speak the language of the host society from the outset (if they do, the question of a moral duty becomes moot). Finally, I will assume that the host society has political institutions that constitute a version of liberal democracy, and has a social market economy of some kind. If societies are structured differently than I presuppose, the question of the duties of immigrants may call for a very different treatment from the one presented here.

I will limit the scope of my investigation in three respects. Firstly, I will only address the question of whether adult immigrants have a duty to learn the host society’s language. In case of children, it is doubtful whether they have moral duties to acquire any capabilities at all. Moreover, assuming that compulsory education is legitimate, the moral question is resolved as a practical political matter by the fact that most immigrant children will learn the language by attending public school.

Secondly, I will not consider duties immigrants might have because they are seeking naturalization. Not all immigrants wish to become naturalized and, in addition, in most Western states naturalization becomes possible only several years following immigration. For these reasons, it is reasonable to treat the question of whether immigrants, simply in their capacity as immigrants, have a duty to learn the language separately from the question of whether those who apply for citizenship should have certain language skills.

Thirdly, although I consider a wide range of moral duties and do not presuppose any specific moral theory, I understand moral duties in a sense that is opposed to acting for the sake of self-interest. It is controversial whether one can have moral duties to oneself. If there are such duties, it is plausible to assume that we have a moral duty to do what makes our lives flourish—which in the case of immigrants plausibly includes acquiring language skills. However, even if there is such a duty, it is a difficult question which kind of reactive attitudes are warranted towards someone who violates this duty to herself. In modern times, it seems that, except for the rare cases where someone violates her own dignity, fulfilling duties to oneself is regarded as a matter of personal decision, or at most as a matter to be discussed with close friends and not as a proper subject of public discourse and criticism. For that reason, I will leave the whole complex of problems related to duties to oneself aside.

My paper is structured as follows. I will begin by demarcating the question I wish to pursue here from other discussions of language rights in the literature, and I will suggest why normative theorists should be interested in my question. I will then discuss in turn what I believe to be the four most promising candidates for reasons that ground a moral duty of immigrants to learn the host society’s language—namely, respect towards the host society; the unavoidability of communication situations; the duty to avoid becoming reliant on assistance from the welfare system; and a contract between host society and immigrants—before drawing a conclusion to the whole argument.

The Debate on Linguistic Justice and Moral Duties of Immigrants

Normative issues concerning language have recently captured a remarkable amount of attention in academic research. Thus, before beginning the main discussion, I would like to situate the question I will pursue here within the existing discussion.

A central question of the current debate is whether a ‘coercive linguistic regime’, to use Van Parijs’s (2011, ch. 5) term, is legitimate. Such a regime, according to Van Parijs, does not intend to accommodate the diverse linguistic preferences of its subjects, but to shape those preferences in support of the official language(s) of a region. In particular, the coercive regime defines the official language as the language that must be taught at school and must be used in public communication, perhaps even in the formal business of private firms.

How is the notion of a coercive linguistic regime linked to the question of moral duties of immigrants? Van Parijs is undoubtedly sympathetic to the idea that immigrants have a duty to learn the official language, but he addresses that issue explicitly only in passing. In one passage he mentions the ‘immigrant’s duty to integrate linguistically in his new home country’ (Van Parijs 2011, p. 150). This claim, however, is not covered by the arguments he presents in that context, where he only argues for the immigrant’s duty to accept a coercive regime. Within such a regime, adult immigrants do not necessarily have a duty to learn the official language. Rather, the regime creates an environment where permanent residents usually have a ‘desire’ (Van Parijs 2011, p. 155) to become proficient in that language. Thus, in a coercive regime, immigrants have strong incentives to learn and regularly use the official language. But failing to respond to an incentive is not morally wrong. Correspondingly, within a coercive regime, members of the host society might have the expectation that most immigrants will learn their language, but they are not necessarily justified in criticizing immigrants for failing to satisfy that expectation.

The difference between the duty to learn the host society’s language and the duty to accept a coercive linguistic regime becomes even more apparent if we turn to Van Parijs’s underlying motivation for defending the coercive regime. According to him, many languages are vulnerable in the sense that without public intervention, there is a danger that they will die out, for instance by being superseded by international languages such as English. Reciprocity implies, he argues further, that all linguistic groups have a right to implement a coercive regime, even those groups whose languages are not vulnerable.

Leaving the problems of the reciprocity argument aside, I think it is plausible to assume that the linguistic group of any vulnerable language has a right to implement measures aimed at preserving their language. However, it is not plausible that non-members of that linguistic group have a moral obligation to preserve the existence of that (from their perspective) foreign language by learning and using it. Non-members have to accept the group members’ efforts to preserve their language, but do not have an obligation to dedicate themselves to pursuing that aim. Thus, non-members have a duty to accept that public school instruction is in that language and that officials use it, but this does not imply that adult non-members have a duty to learn that language.

This is not to say that Van Parijs’s arguments are not relevant for our question of whether there is a moral duty to learn the host society’s language. Indeed, I will come back to some of his claims in the course of my investigation. At this point, I just want to highlight that Van Parijs does not answer our question: even if the coercive regime is legitimate (which is disputed, e.g. by De Schutter 2008), the question of whether immigrants have a duty to integrate linguistically remains open.

Other authors have addressed the question of language rights of minorities, including immigrant minorities (pars pro toto, see Patten 2014, chs 6 and 8). Again, this debate does not specifically examine whether immigrants have a duty to learn the host society’s language. Whether the right of immigrants to continue to cultivate their native language should enjoy legal protection is independent of whether immigrants have a duty to learn the language of the host society as well.

Closer to the issue of this paper is the debate over so-called ‘obligatory integration measures’, that is, legal requirements immigrants have to fulfil, such as to take an integration course (see Michalowski and Oers 2011; for the normative debate, see Higgins 2018). According to a plausible view, states may legitimately implement such laws only if immigrants have a moral duty to learn the host society’s language. Nonetheless, the question of moral duties is widely neglected in that debate. David Miller—one of the few authors who explicitly discusses obligatory integration measures from a normative perspective—argues that states might prescribe language classes as a form of justifiable paternalism (Miller 2016a, pp. 136–137), thereby approaching the issue without appealing to the moral duties of immigrants. Social scientists often take a similar path and either advocate mandatory language requirements based on the expected positive outcomes (Joppke 2017) or reject them as an instrument of domination by the majority (Permoser 2012)—but in neither case do they address the moral duties of immigrants. Only Goppel (2019) touches on several issues that are directly relevant for that question. She argues that immigrants who have lived in the host society for some years acquire a moral claim to stay and that a lack of language skills in no way compromises that moral claim. Her arguments imply that not learning the language is not a kind of moral wrong that would undermine the claim to stay; but she does not explicitly answer the question of whether there is a moral duty to learn the language at all.

Therefore, the question of whether immigrants have a duty to learn the language of the host society has not been substantively addressed in the literature. In contrast, the current debate focuses on questions concerning the conduct of host states, and pays little or no attention to possible duties of immigrants. To be sure, the conduct of states is especially important for normative theory, since states are the most powerful agents whose actions have enormous impacts on the lives of individuals, whereas individual conduct usually does not have a comparable impact on society. However, it would be mistaken to reduce normative theory to state conduct for at least two reasons.

Firstly, theorists should attach intrinsic importance to the duties of individuals. The mainstream debate on immigration has been criticized for years for treating migrants as objects of state decisions rather than as autonomous decision-makers.⁴ Discussing immigrants’ duties would contribute to remedying that deficiency. As Gibney observes with regard to refugees, ‘[u]nless we recognise the moral choices refugees make, we risk dehumanising them, we risk reducing them merely to victims defined solely by immediate circumstances. Just as recognising people as rights holders may be a way of acknowledging their dignity, so, too, is recognising them as duty holders’ (2019, p. 135). Similar statements are also true, I believe, of migrants who do not count as refugees. I should emphasize that discussion of immigrants’ duties must not replace research on discrimination and the violation of immigrants’ rights, of course, but should be seen as an additional task of normative theory.

Secondly, answering the question about immigrants’ duties is useful for answering further moral questions. If we want to know under what conditions public criticism of those who refuse to learn the language might be warranted, or whether institutions are justified in treating poorly integrated immigrants worse than those who are well integrated, or whether states should provide publicly funded interpreters, we would do well to ask first whether immigrants have a duty to learn the language. In particular, and deviating from the current debate, I hold the question of immigrants’ duties to be crucial for justifying obligatory language requirements in immigration law. To be sure, the existence of moral duties is not the only relevant consideration, but it should count as highly relevant for any answer to these questions.

Respect Towards the Members of the Host Society

Let me now turn to the possible reasons mentioned above for why immigrants might have a duty to learn the host society’s language, each of which is based on a more fundamental moral duty that implies such a duty when applied to the circumstances of immigration. Following the approach of the linguistic justice debate, as well as an important assumption often made in public debate, one might first ask whether learning the language is an implication or an ingredient of the respect that newcomers ought to show towards (members of) the host society.

Real-life examples easily bring to light that respect indeed is a serious issue when it comes to questions concerning language. In my childhood, I often went on vacation to the Costa Blanca in Spain, an area that is also very popular among German retirees. I often observed retired Germans who were living in Spain without any knowledge of Spanish (nor, of course, of Valenciano, the local language)—some of them did not even make efforts to be able to say ‘hello’ in the natives’ language. Without intending an all-things-considered judgement, I think their behaviour has an offensive element: people who decide to spend the rest of their lives in Spain should, when they enter a restaurant or a pharmacy, at least try to communicate in Spanish, one might plausibly think. It seems that they treat the native population more like servants than as persons on equal footing if they do not make any efforts to learn their language.

In his 2011 book, Van Parijs provides another impressive example. He tells the story of an American executive who has lived in Belgium, together with his family, for years. That American once remarked disgustedly about his landlord: ‘You’ll never believe it, … I have been renting this villa for three years now, and the owner is still not able to speak English!’ (Van Parijs 2011, p. 133). One might plausibly believe that the American’s attitude is objectionable, and that his objectionable behaviour somehow is linked to a failure of respect.

Van Parijs argues that the executive’s attitude was wrong because of his ‘colonial’ expectation that others have to adjust to his linguistic capabilities, rather than that he should adjust to theirs. We can suppose that the executive thereby relied on the ‘strength’ of his language;⁵ in conflicts of language, the ‘lingua franca’ English always trumps, according to his attitude. I believe that, if there is anything wrong in the retired Germans’ behaviour, then it is because of a similar reason: they might be relying on their economic strength. In general, the Germans who move to Spain are well-situated people with a much higher income than the Spanish citizens with whom they typically come into contact. When these Germans enter a restaurant without even trying to say ‘Hello’ in Spanish, they might give the impression that in their view, it is up to the Spanish to make efforts to communicate with them by learning English or German, because the Spanish are more dependent on doing business with foreigners than the other way round.

The intuition that the American executive and the German retirees are acting objectionably can be based on a philosophical notion of respect. The duty to respect other people involves the obligation to view them as communication partners on an equal footing. ‘On an equal footing’ does not imply that the burden of communication has to be shared exactly equally. Instead, following Harry Frankfurt’s approach, respect for persons as treating them on an equal footing means that deviations from an equal distribution of the burden of communication need to be based on relevant facts of a particular person and her circumstances.⁶ Economic power or membership of a powerful linguistic group should not be seen as a relevant fact, if it is a question of how to approach a landlord, a salesperson or a waiter. It is, however, relevant that the immigrant by learning one language would be able to communicate in all areas of life, while the salesperson or the waiter would have to learn dozens of languages if they wanted to speak with any immigrant in his or her native language. As a result, in the two examples, respect for others prima facie requires the immigrant not to expect the national to use the immigrant’s language or some other language the immigrant is familiar with. If the immigrant did expect that, he tends to regard the natives not as equal persons, but as a subordinate group or as second-class human beings.

Can we infer from this argument that immigrants in general have a duty to learn the host society’s language? I do not think so, for three reasons. Firstly, in both examples the immigrant is in a more powerful position than the natives. Things become difficult as soon as this feature disappears. Think of Syrian refugees living in a European country. It would be strange to interpret their behaviour as a form of treating natives as a subordinate group of people when they try to communicate with salespeople by signs. The question of what a fair distribution of the burden of communication involves is much more difficult in this case. At least in the case of older refugees who are able to speak an international language, it seems reasonable to expect the salesperson to make efforts to communicate in that international language, even if this is more demanding for him or her. Respect is always a mutual requirement, and often both sides will exhibit features that count in favour of giving their language preferences some weight.

So far, it might seem that, while the respect argument does not apply to all immigrants, it does apply at least to those who are in a more powerful position than ordinary members of the host society. The remaining points suggest that the respect argument is not valid generally even when applied to that group of immigrants. Secondly, not learning the language does not necessarily imply a failure of respect, because there are many ways of showing respect for other people and immigrants have some scope for choosing which ways they show respect. Perhaps the two examples mentioned are so compelling because we imagine the immigrants employing certain gestures—a condescending look in the case of the German in Spain, or an exasperated tone of voice in case of the American. Suppose, in contrast, an immigrant who intends to communicate in an international language is behaving politely and treating her communication partners perfectly cordially—in this case, we can hardly accuse her of showing disrespect simply because she is not able to speak the language.

Thirdly, an immigrant could simply decide not to strive for contact with natives and to accept the disadvantages that will result from this decision. In that case, he does not expect natives to make special efforts, and thus does not treat them as inferior.

Some might think that it constitutes intrinsically bad behaviour to be a guest in a foreign land and not show interest for the native population, comparable to someone who enjoys hospitality in the house of a friend and does not make any attempt to converse with the friend’s family. According to that view, the failure to seek contact with the host society would already show disrespect. However, the guest metaphor is misleading in many respects. Almost all immigrants differ in relevant respects from guests—some because they pay for everything they consume, others because they did not enter as a matter of free choice, and many because they plan to become full members over time. Hence, host societies cannot base their expectations on the guest metaphor. I do not see that, apart from intuitions based on the guest metaphor, there are any arguments which suggest that not showing interest for the native population is disrespectful in itself, and so we should give up that view.

To summarize, I believe that an attitude of respect will rightly lead many immigrants to learn the language, as one way of treating the native population with the appropriate respect. However, not every immigrant who does not learn the language violates the obligation to treat the members of the host society respectfully, nor can we define a particular group of immigrants who generally violate obligations of respect by refusing to learn the host society’s language. At best, immigrants who might be suspected of showing disrespect towards the host society have a disjunctive duty either to learn the language or to show respect in other ways, such as special demonstrations of politeness, or to abstain from communication with the host society.

Unavoidability of Communication Situations Involving Duties

Part of my answer to the respect approach was that immigrants might decide not to seek contact with members of the host society. To this, one might object that the need to communicate with members of the host society inevitably arises sooner or later—at some point, everybody needs a doctor or a pharmacy, everybody will order a meal in a bistro, and anyone might barge into a stranger and have to apologize. Hence, although an immigrant might decide to avoid most contact with members of the host society, they will not be able to avoid all communication.

Starting from this assumption, one might try to repair the argument of respect; but since the argument faces further powerful objections, it seems more promising to proceed in a different direction. Some of the unavoidable situations mentioned involve duties whose fulfilment presupposes language skills. When I accidentally barge into a stranger, I have a duty to apologize and explain that I did not intend to shove them, for which I will need language skills. We can easily think of other examples of unavoidable communication situations generating or involving duties. Suppose I go for a walk in a deserted area and observe a car accident. In this situation, I have a duty to bring help by calling the ambulance and the police, which requires language skills. If I have witnessed a crime, I might have a (moral and legal) duty to testify in court, for which again language skills will be required, not for my own sake, but in order to fulfil duties towards others. If I have children at school, I might have a duty towards my children to talk with the teachers about their progress in classes, for which, once again, language skills are required.

Even in cases that mainly serve the immigrant’s self-interest, moral duties towards others might be at stake. When I am at the doctor and I am not able to speak the language, the doctor may have to invest much more time in an attempt to make communication possible than would be necessary if I spoke the language. I plausibly have a duty to facilitate the doctor’s work as much as possible, which often requires language skills. More generally, it can be said that in many situations that serve an immigrant’s interest, he or she has ‘duties to cooperate’ that presuppose language skills. Hence, even in the numerous situations that mainly concern the immigrant’s self-interest and therefore, at first sight, do not involve duties towards others, a special class of moral duties—duties to cooperate—may be involved.

We are now in the position to formulate an argument in support of a duty to learn the host society’s language based on the unavoidability of duty-involving communication situations. All inhabitants of a country will from time to time encounter situations in which they have some moral duty that requires language skills—either a duty based on the interest of other persons, or a duty of cooperation in situations that serve their own self-interest. Since there is no way to avoid with certainty the possibility of ending up in such situations, everyone should be prepared to handle these situations. Immigrants should, therefore, make provisions to deal with these situations. They have the meta-duty to learn the language—a duty whose fulfilment enables them to fulfil other duties if they find themselves in communication situations involving duties.

However, there are several reasons for thinking that that duty is extremely limited. First, many of the situations that require language skills occur infrequently. It rarely occurs that someone has to call the ambulance and there are no bystanders who could take over if she does not have sufficient language skills. If it is very unlikely that you will encounter a situation that requires language skills, the duty to be prepared for such a situation becomes weak or even non-existent. To use an analogy, since it is very unlikely that I will observe someone drowning, I do not have any duty to train as a lifeguard. Second, as the example of barging into a stranger shows, some situations that call for language skills are more common, but they require only very basic knowledge. So, knowing just a few words in the host society’s language might be sufficient for making polite apologies. Third, it is often possible to deal with the problems at hand in other ways. Courts can provide interpreters, doctors could use machine translation, restaurants can provide multilingual menus, etc.⁷ Fourth, sometimes the duty to cooperate is weak because the effort the communication partner has to make in order to communicate with someone who does not speak her language is very slight. It might be inconvenient for the doctor to speak English with me, but not so great an encumbrance that I have an urgent duty to relieve her of that burden.

I am inclined to believe that, for most immigrants, any possible case involving a duty that requires language skills either is extremely unlikely to occur, or requires only very basic language skills, or could be solved by other ‘technological’ means with justifiable expenditure, or involves only a morally insignificant additional burden for others. Needless to say, there are special cases where particular immigrants may have a robust duty to learn the language based on unavoidable situations involving duties—for example, immigrants who, due to chronic illness, regularly need some health care that requires language skills and who cannot find a doctor who speaks a language they are able to speak. Since these cases depend on many diverse facts about concrete circumstances, we should treat them as exceptions.⁸

This leaves us with a hybrid result. On the one side, our examples of duty-involving situations imply that immigrants have a duty to learn the language, and punctilious moral theorists will insist that this duty should be fulfilled. On the other side, the duty in question is limited in so many respects that, apart from few exceptional cases, we cannot treat it as a serious moral demand and we should not criticize those we believe violate that duty. Even insignificant facts regarding people’s standing, biography, character and capabilities can be sufficient to outweigh that duty in most situations or at least to excuse those who violate it.

Duty to Avoid Becoming Reliant on Assistance from the Welfare System

Another approach to establishing a duty to learn the language is based on the assumption that immigrants may acquire welfare entitlements that entail corresponding responsibilities. Societies with a social security system provide support to everyone who is not able to care for themselves, in particular in case of unemployment. According to a ‘rights and responsibilities view’ on social security systems, the entitlement to receive support entails as its counterpart that everybody should do their best not to be in a position where they are in need of social security assistance. In this view, not to do one’s utmost to support oneself violates the rights of those who are financing the system through their taxes.

Such a ‘rights and responsibilities view’ is probably the dominant normative approach to social justice within liberalism. In theory, those who are entitled to benefits may free themselves from that obligation by voluntarily declining to claim their entitlements. But since they will inevitably require sufficient food, clothing and a place to live, this is usually not an option in practice. Hence, we can conclude that the existence of social security systems imposes on all those who are not able to support their basic needs the duty to take measures to improve the chances that they will be able to do so in the future.

Based on that view, a case can be made that some immigrants have a duty to learn the host society’s language. If an immigrant is unemployed and therefore relies on welfare support, it could be argued that learning the language will significantly increase his or her chances of finding a job. Thus, immigrants might have a duty to learn the language as a means of meeting their responsibilities as beneficiaries of a social security system.

Before discussing the nature and limits of this duty, it is worth considering the objection that the duty in question is not a duty in the relevant sense defined in the Introduction, because it is not constituted by the fact of immigration, but by the fact of unemployment. According to this objection, we can rightly say that the unemployed have a duty to upgrade their education, but we should not say that immigrants have a duty to learn the language. Just as it would be conceptually misleading to say that red-haired soldiers have a moral duty to set up in rank and order, instead of saying that all soldiers have a duty of obedience, it could be misleading to say that unemployed immigrants have a duty to learn the language, because we have defined the groups of people about whom we make judgements in terms of accidental characteristics, even though our judgements may be true.

The answer to that objection is that it can normally be assumed that the fact of unemployment is not an accidental feature of immigrants or something that immigrants have ‘brought with them’ from their country of origin. Newly arrived immigrants usually suffer unemployment because they do not have accepted educational qualifications for the host society’s labour market, do not know the procedures for finding a job, do not have a social network and do not speak the language. Thus, in the context of the ethics of immigration and integration, we can rightly address the group of unemployed immigrants and assign them the duty to learn the language in order to improve their standing on the labour market as a duty that is constituted by the fact of immigration.

However, insofar as the duty to learn the language is based on a duty to avoid becoming reliant on assistance from the welfare system, it is limited in several respects. First of all, the duty applies only to a certain group of immigrants, namely those who do rely on welfare assistance or are at serious risk of falling into that situation. Second, the duty is only valid if learning the official language indeed increases the chances of finding a job⁹ and there are no other comparably effective job training options. In some cases, learning an international language or getting a driver’s licence might be equally or more important for finding a job. If there are several options, it should be left up to the immigrant to decide which one to choose. At any rate, the argument as presented does not authorize the host society to dictate to immigrants which among a range of equally effective options for enhancing their employability they have to pursue. However, given the fact that language skills are usually already necessary to identify suitable job vacancies, learning the language will often be a necessary part of further education.

Third, the nature of the duty depends on how long the immigrant will presumably stay in the host country. In the case of immigrants who plan to remain only for a short period of time—such as refugees who intend to return to their country of origin as soon as circumstances permit—they might have a duty to accept low-wage jobs, but they do not have a duty to acquire skills which are advantageous only in the long run. More importantly, most host states initially grant immigrants temporary residence permits. An immigrant who is only permitted to stay for two years and whose prospects of being admitted for a longer period are uncertain, is certainly not morally obliged to invest, say, nine months to learn the language in order to be able to find a job. Hence, host societies are faced with a trade-off: either they grant immigrants a better prospect of staying, or they accept that unemployed immigrants do not have a duty to improve their prospects on the labour market.

I would like to mention, finally, that the duty to avoid becoming reliant on assistance from the welfare system might be rejected as a matter of principle. At least those who support a universal basic income will not accept that undertaking special efforts to earn one’s livelihood is an enforceable moral duty, and some of them will deny that it is a moral duty at all. One might ask further whether the existence of the moral duty to avoid becoming reliant on assistance from the welfare system depends on the moral justifiability of a universal basic income, or rather on the decision of a society to implement a universal basic income,¹⁰ or whether one of the two possibilities is sufficient to negate the duty. I cannot elaborate on these questions here, so I will simply assume that, as long as Western societies view their own members as having such a duty, it is also appropriate to view immigrants as having that duty.

To sum up, the duty to avoid becoming reliant on assistance from the welfare system entails that a certain group of immigrants have a duty to learn the language. However, we are not justified in concluding that unemployed immigrants in general have that duty. Whether they have depends on their willingness and legal permission to take up permanent residence and on the available options to adjust to the labour market.

Contract Between Immigrants and the Host Society

It is a widely acknowledged moral principle that contracts should be fulfilled. Hence, contracts may give rise to a duty to learn the host society’s language. Since I am not interested in any contracts that might involve a promise to learn the language, but only in those implied by the circumstances of immigration,¹¹ the only agreement that might be relevant here would be a contract between host state and immigrant that ties the permission to stay to some reciprocal performance on the part of the immigrant.

Interestingly, in the philosophical literature, such contracts only play a marginal role,¹² whereas in real-life politics we can find many examples of immigration being framed as a contract between the host state and immigrants. The argument is that if states have a discretionary moral right to close their borders they also are at liberty to open their borders to immigrants under certain conditions. In particular, they may require those they admit to agree to an integration contract that includes the promise to learn the official language. That way, immigrants might acquire a duty to learn the language solely based on a contractual promise they made on entering the country.

Note that the argument from an integration contract is important only if states require immigrants to promise reciprocal performances that cannot be easily justified otherwise. If the contract included, say, the promise of the immigrant not to commit violent crimes, it would have a merely symbolic function: immigrants would have been obliged not commit violent crimes even if there had not been a contract. The same applies if a group of immigrants already has a duty to learn the language based on some other fact. A contract that involved a promise to learn the language, in that case, might help to specify in detail what that duty involves, but should not be seen as its basis.

Thus, the integration contract is relevant here only if it goes beyond what morality requires in any case. At the other end of the spectrum, it must not contain any requirements that are incompatible with basic moral standards. For example, states must not require immigrants to convert to a certain religion or confession—such a requirement would violate basic rights of immigrants, and hence it would not be binding on immigrants. One could plausibly argue that, for a large proportion of immigrants, a contractual agreement to learn the official language both goes beyond what morality requires in any case and remains within the range of what morality permits to be part of a contract.

However, for the contract to be validly concluded in the first place, states must actually have a discretionary right to permit or not to permit entry. If states owe admission to a particular person, they are not free to demand certain extra promises in return for granting admission over and above what an immigrant already owes to the host society for other reasons. Some groups of persons certainly have a moral right to enter. This is true, in particular, for most¹³ people who have special claims for reasons of family reunification or as refugees. In neither case are states justified in making the permission to stay contingent on reciprocal undertakings on the part of immigrants, but just have to grant the justified claims of those who want to immigrate.

Consider, by way of analogy, a cargo ship. When the ship leaves a port, the crew is at liberty to offer free passage to someone who promises, in return, to play chess with the captain or to make music in the evening. The individual in question is free to accept the offer or not, and if she accepts it, she acquires a moral duty to do what she has promised. Now let us assume that the cargo ship encounters a shipwrecked person on the high seas. Obviously, the crew is not free to make the offer of a place on board conditional on this person promising to play chess with the captain. They are simply obliged to rescue this person by taking him or her on board. It might be fair to request the shipwrecked person to help out in the kitchen within the limits of his or her capabilities. Neither the shipwrecked person nor the crew has chosen to be in the situation of living together on the ship, but once the situation has arisen, the burdens should be divided fairly among all involved. Dividing the burdens fairly here is not the result of any contract, but follows from the characteristics of the situation. In contrast, it would be illegitimate to demand any promises beyond what the shipwrecked person is morally obliged to do anyway before letting him or her on board.

An increasing number of philosophers doubt that states, in general, have a right discretionarily to permit or not to permit entry. These philosophers call for open borders and believe that everyone has a pro tanto moral right to immigrate in any state. If that is true, the argument from the integration contract comes under pressure. It seems that everyone has to be treated like the shipwrecked person, since states are not free to place conditions on immigration. There might be ways to rescue the argument also for an open border view. In particular, it could be argued that since states that are attractive destinations for immigrants cannot admit all those who wish to immigrate at once, states could be within their rights if they prioritize by using integration contracts, so that those potential immigrants who are willing to sign the contract would be admitted first.¹⁴

I will not pursue the open borders issue further here—it is sufficient to observe that if the open borders view is correct, duties from the integration contract will be questionable, whereas opponents of the open border view will be committed to accept duties based on integration contracts. In any case, two further aspects must be discussed. One might ask, firstly, whether the contract has to be concluded explicitly, or whether implicit consent might be sufficient. Since only a handful of states implement formal integration contracts, for most cases this question is decisive for determining whether a duty does indeed exist.

Kymlicka has prominently argued that by migrating voluntarily, people implicitly give up their right to live within their own culture (Kymlicka 1995, p. 96). Can we extend this argument, by claiming that, in virtue of the pure fact of immigrating, immigrants always implicitly promise to learn the language of the host society? I do not think so.¹⁵ Linguistic integration is not internally linked to migration in the same way as renouncing living within one’s culture can plausibly be so linked: migrants know that language skills will be advantageous for their future life, but nevertheless it is not contradictory to migrate without seeking linguistic integration. However, if the existing immigration laws in a particular state require immigrants to attend integration courses or to engage in other integration-promoting activities, and the immigrants are informed about this in advance, I think it is reasonable to assume that they have agreed to an implicit integration contract.¹⁶

Goppel (2019, p. 76) objects that, if tacit consent rendered predictable legal treatment legitimate, immigrants would also be bound to accept all unjust laws they knew of ex ante, because immigrating would count as giving tacit consent to these laws. In response, one could argue that states, in the integration contract, cannot require a promise to accept unduly unjust laws, for similar reasons that they cannot require immigrants to convert to a certain religion. Since the requirement to learn the language does not violate basic moral principles, tacit consent would bind immigrants to the norm to learn the language, but not to respect any unjust laws. Hence, although from a moral point of view an explicit contract is preferable to an implicit one, it is reasonable to assume that in many cases, the contract is concluded implicitly by immigrating and thereby knowing the legal duties one is faced with in the state of destination.

One might ask, secondly, whether the duty itself, or at least the right to punish violations of the duty, might change over time. While the premises of the arguments from respect, from the unavoidability of communication and from the duty to earn one’s livelihood persist or might persist over time, the promise to learn the language was given only once, at the point of time of immigration. I agree with Goppel that failing to learn the language does not justify states in refusing to renew immigrants’ permission to stay.¹⁷ Although initially it might have been permissible for the state to grant admission only on condition that immigrants promise to learn the language, at some later time it would be disproportionate if states insisted on them fulfilling that promise. This does not imply automatically that the moral duty lapses. Immigrants might be morally obliged to learn the language even though states must not sanction them if they do not. Plausibly, however, the commitment to the promise weakens over time.

To sum up, immigrants have a duty to learn the language of the host society if they have implicitly or explicitly agreed on an integration contract with the host state which includes the obligation to learn the official language, and if they did not have an initial moral right to enter anyway. Contrary to the intuition that the longer the stay is the stronger the obligation to acquire language skills becomes, it is plausible to assume that the moral duty generated by the integration contract weakens over time.

Conclusion

I have argued, first of all, that whether immigrants have a moral duty to learn the host society’s language is largely a separate issue from the questions that have been discussed in the recent literature on linguistic justice. Since immigrants are not only objects of legal provisions, but responsible agents, that question is certainly of intrinsic interest. Furthermore, answering that question is likely to be relevant for some related questions that arise in that context, such as the question of when public criticism of the conduct of immigrants is warranted, whether publicly financed interpreters should be provided and under what conditions states can legitimately require immigrants to take language classes or to demonstrate linguistic skills.

Then I discussed the four most promising reasons that may ground a duty of immigrants to learn the host society’s language. I argued that all immigrants have a pro tanto duty to learn the host society’s language based on the unavoidability of communication situations involving duties, but that this duty is so weak that we can hardly treat it as a serious moral demand. Two groups of immigrants, however, have strong duties to learn the language. One group of immigrants has a duty to learn the language because they should try to be independent of assistance from the welfare system. Another group of immigrants has a duty to learn the language based on integration contracts.

These results imply that many, but by no means all, immigrants have a duty to learn the language. Since the properties that determine whether an immigrant has such a duty are diverse, the groups of immigrants that are commonly distinguished in public debate will probably turn out to be mixed regarding the duty: some, but not all, refugees will have that duty, as well as some, but not all, economic migrants; some poor immigrants will have it as well as some wealthy ones; some unemployed immigrants will have the duty while others will not, etc. It follows that not only is a blanket criticism of all those who do not make efforts to learn the language not warranted, but also that a blanket criticism of non-learners who belong to one of these particular groups—refugees, poverty migrants, unemployed immigrants, certain ethnic groups—is not warranted either. More investigation is needed, however, to fully answer the related questions mentioned above. For instance, it could be that some immigrants are immune from criticism because they may be excused from fulfilling their duty for some personal reason, or that legal obligations to learn the language might turn out to be disproportionate.