Academia can instigate policy debates. Data collection instruments like the Census are framed in a monolingual mindset that makes it difficult to obtain a full picture of language diversity, while the smart city concept can be applied to language to capture a wider range of data. In using language to determine origin and entitlement to refugee status, we interrogated prevailing concepts and enriched judicial procedures by offering new methods of analysis and interpretation, helping to ensure a more just consideration of claims. The chapter also describes the managerial culture of control over the public narrative around the value of modern languages that aimed essentially at protecting the sector and existing ontologies. The chapter concludes with a consideration of locality studies as a new, alternative framework through which to engage in the study of local languages and forge international connections.

The chapter reviews approaches to decoloniality and critical evaluations of the relaunch of the civic university idea in the twenty-first century, and the risks of commodifying diversity and community links and objectifying communities in pursuit of a neoliberal agenda. In 2010 the Multilingual Manchester (MLM) project was launched as a model of non-linear, reciprocal partnership combining teaching, research and public engagement. It set up multiple partnerships with local service providers and community groups, a student volunteer scheme, digital resources and a policy engagement strand and created public spaces to engage with the city’s multilingualism. Ironically it was the crystalisation of a neoliberal university agenda that gave the initiative momentum: MLM was seen as a useful tool to market degree programmes by offering a unique student experience and employability prospects, a way to maximise impact (in 2014 and 2021 more than half of the relevant unit of assessment’s impact submissions were linked to MLM) and to demonstrate connections with the locality.

The pro-Brexit campaign leading up to the 2016 referendum in the UK and in its aftermath was accompanied and driven by a narrative that was hostile to immigration and its cultural implications. Language played a role, with Leave campaigners criticising the presence of multiple languages in UK society and government agencies embarking on an 'English first' campaign that linked community languages to lack of integration and social incoherence. At the same time some arguments in support of foreign language learning embraced the Brexit narrative claiming that language skills will help post-Brexit Britain gain global influence. The chapter surveys different strands of UK language policy and concludes with an assessment of latest Census figures on language pointing to the increase in multilingualism.

City institutions engage with language provisions in order to ensure equal access to services. Global provisions are intertwined with local knowledge resources introduced by individual agents. As UK austerity measures post-2012 led to a reduction of resources and specialised provisions, institutions began to rely more and more on the deployment of local individualised knowledge in response to communication challenges. Multilingual spaces became in some areas improvised and driven by the agency of both institutional agents and clients. The city’s day-to-day operations can be seen as a space of resistance to monolingual ideologies, born out of the necessity to provide front-line services to all and tightly embedded into the shared experience of a multilingual reality. But city-based institutions have limited powers to legislate or to fund operations.

The chapter critiques prevailing hierarchies that associate modern European languages with skills and community or home languages with heritage. It reports on engagement work with schools that showed how home multilingualism can be recognised as a potential skill while also embedding a view of language in an ideology of pluralism. A survey of local supplementary schools that teach community languages shows how pluralistic ideologies are embraced as staff engage with clients of multiple backgrounds. Language becomes a disaporic stance, a practice around which networks of connections are built. Reflection on the multilingual environment and on multilingual experiences and encounters offers opportunities to explore the disconnect between language and place and between language and predefined community boundaries.

Public celebrations of multilingualism forge ideologies of civic belonging that incorporate linguistic diversity into local citizenship. They create a concept of citizenship that embraces historical migration while sharing local space. In Manchester, celebration of language days started in schools, proceeded to neighbourhood events and culminated with the adoption of the UNESCO International Mother Language Day as an annual civic event. The latter is partly motivated by an agenda to effectively market cultural festivals as part of a local creative industry. Celebrations are informed by a city language narrative that relies on public communication of research results. Public display of languages interrogates language hierarchies and claims language rights. But as the city language narrative is anchored more firmly and more widely, the decolonial agenda that it once represented becomes to some extent appropriated by the neoliberal reality.

Cities are contact zones characterised by conviviality of cultures. They have been described as the ideal setting for multilingual utopias, where institutional spaces emerge that cultivate multilingualism. In the context of globalisation and super-diversity, cities can redefine themselves as post-national spaces. Neoliberalism embraces diversity for its profitablity value; it is opposed by notions of the right to the city and local citizenship. Critical social and sociolinguistic theory embraces definitions of identity, community and language that recognise the dynamics of multiple components in individuals' repertoires of features and networks of practice. Traditional notions of identity, belonging, commuity and language give way to an appreciation of the fluidity of forms of belonging and networking practice. Diasporas are understood as translocal networks of practice with multiple expressions of belonging. Manchester as an early industrial city offers an interesting setting to observe the evolution of diaspora communities and their alignment with fluid language practices.