This paper examines the existing answers of social and academic inclusion provided by a Higher Education Institution (HEI) to African international students from Portuguese speaking countries, whose mobility to Portugal dates back to the 1980s. This analysis results from an ongoing action research project called “Trovoada de Ideias - Linguistic and social inclusion of Students from the Portuguese Speaking African Countries (PALOP) in the Portuguese Higher Education (HE)”*, conducted at ISCTE-IUL since 2016. The project was set up on previous focus groups diagnosis focus groups with students and professors in ISCTE-IUL (2016). These discussions highlighted that the sociolinguistic contexts of these students lead to unexpected and ignored situations of miscomprehension among speakers of different varieties of Portuguese, hindering the social inclusion of a significant number of these students and, consequently, their academic performance. Based on this evidence and on the need for ISCTE-IUL to build a frame for improving responses to multicultural challenges implied in the social dynamics of language variation, partnerships were established with two internal services: the Laboratory of Transversal Competences and the Social Action Services. This led to the implementation of the following actions: 1) the creation of a course unit (UC) on transversal skills in academic language; 2) the creation of a team of mediator-mentor students. Additionally, several focus groups were held with African Students Associations and professors from Portuguese HEIs aiming to produce a brochure of pedagogical guidelines for professors from HEIs. Through an in-depth analysis of these actions, we expect to contribute to the linguistic and social inclusion of these students in the academic context of ISCTE-IUL.

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Linguistic inclusion,Social inclusion,Students international mobility,Portuguese language