This paper deals with multilingualism and identity in the multiculturalsociety, as a consequence of processes of migration and minorizaton. Inthis context, the status and use of immigrant minority languages areconsidered from phenomenological, demographic, and sociolinguisticperspectives.The first section offers phenomenological perspectives on how theselanguages and their speakers hit the headlines, in particular in terms of aconceptual discussion of such notions as nation-state, national and ethnicidentity, ethnicity, citizenship, and integration.The second section goes into the utilization and effects of differentdemographic criteria for the definition and identification of (school)population groups in a multicultural society. Given the decreasing significanceof nationality and birth country criteria, it is argued that thecombined criteria of ethnicity and home language are potentially promisinglong-term alternatives for obtaining basic information on the increasinglymulticultural composition of European nation-states.The third section offers sociolinguistic perspectives on the distributionand vitality of immigrant minority languages across Europe. In thiscontext, the rationale, method, and first outcomes of the MultilingualCities Project, carried out in six major multicultural cities in differentEuropean Union memberstates, are presented. The project is carried outunder the auspices of the European Cultural Foundation, established inAmsterdam, and is coordinated by a research group of Babylon at TilburgUniversity.
