Despite the recognition of the Portuguese language as a mean of internationalization and access to certified knowledge, both in the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP, Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé e Príncipe, East-Timor and Equatorial Guinea) - and, with different approaches, within each country - it is urgent to discuss the linguistic-social inclusion of students from Portuguese-Speaking African countries in Portuguese higher education. Their experiences report unexpected situations of incomprehension and misrecognised language practices by the dominant variety in the Portuguese academia. These situations cause linguistic insecurity and inferiority complexes towards the linguistic practices and uses of national students from African countries vis-à-vis the academic language expected in Portugal, strongly influenced by the lack of knowledge on these students’ reality and the international policies discussed within CPLP. For this communication we bring into discussion the reports of semi-directive interviews applied to Angolan and Guinean students, focusing on their linguistic socialization experiences throughout life trajectories, namely language transmission strategies within the family, school, higher education and peer networks, both in their countries of origin and Portugal. The Portuguese language performs different functions depending on the context, varying between majority L1; majority L2; or minority L2; academic language. Observed negotiations between different linguistic ideologies are contextualized by the colonial and migratory experiences that run through the linguistic and educational biographies of these students. By analyzing the complexity of their linguistic-communicative repertoires in their different contextual ecologies at the micro and meso scale (family, social and institutional), we aim to understand the impact of the different observed ideologies on their language choices and academic identity in multiple domains of use, hoping to produce informed analytical tools on the social and historical dynamics of language policies in the different contexts (country of origin, country of study, and the CPLP).

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African international students,language ideologies,post-colonial migrations,Higher education,Portuguese as a Pluricentric language