Migrants and Literacy Crises

2011

International comparisons of levels of literacy have in some countries been interpreted as an indication of a prevailing literacy crisis that demands political actions to avoid negative impact on national competitiveness, democracy, and coherence. Special attention is focused in the Danish crisis discourse on literacy as a reading competence and on migrants who, in particular, have become symbols of the crisis. In this article, the values and beliefs embedded in the political actions taken in the wake of the literacy crisis are analysed and the implications of the functionally based discursive construction of the literacy crisis for migrants are discussed. Based on an understanding of liter…