Justine Lubnow

This article examines the disproportionate demand for language instruction at Blue Door Education (BDE), a Maltese non-governmental organisation (NGO) where displaced and marginalised adult learners overwhelmingly prioritise English over Maltese, despite the country’s official bilingual status and Maltese being the national popular language. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's theories of “linguistic market” and “symbolic violence”, the author argues that this preference is a rational reaction to a neoliberal economic climate that positions English as the language required for market-driven economic survival and essential for employment, while Maltese, despite being the mother tongue, is commonly seen by outsiders as having a narrow practical reach beyond national identity in a small state, and therefore a “cultural bonus”. Through practitioner observation and lived-experience narratives, this essay highlights how migrants are discouraged from learning the Maltese language, be it by racialised gatekeeping in the public sphere, or institutionalised censorship in the workplace. By critiquing the “deficit model” of integration, which blames the learner for systematic failures, this essay advocates for a shift from functional “lifelong learning” to a more transformative educational framework via Freire’s (2000) approach, making migrant voices pivotal to dismantling structural barriers to true social belonging in Malta.