Project Report: “Skilled Migration and Global English: Language, Development, and the African Professional” Funded by the Worldwide Universities Network, Feb. 1, 2010 to Feb.1, 2011. Lead PI: Suresh Canagarajah, Director Migration Studies Project, Penn State University, USA. Co-PI‘s: Adrian Bailey, Leeds University, UK; Frances Giampapa, Bristol University, UK; Margaret Hawkins, University of Wisconsin, USA; Ellen Hurst, University of Cape Town, South Africa; Ahmar Mahboob, University of Sydney, Australia; Paul Roberts, York University, UK; Sandra Silberstein, University of Washington, USA i . 1. Introduction: This pilot study addresses a missing dimension of research and policy consideration in the migration-development nexus. The focus of our inquiry is how language skills facilitate success for skilled migrants in their professions in host communities and, in turn, influence productive contributions to their home communities. In more general terms, the study has implications for the communicative competences and resources skilled migrants require in order to engage productively in professional and development endeavours. This study is important for several reasons. Though proficiency in the medium of communication in the host community is assumed to an asset according to human-capital orientations, language hasn‘t received in-depth exploration. The few studies we have are demographic. They show that there is a correlation between expertise in the dominant language and levels of success as measured by the income of migrants in the land of settlement (Adsera & Pytlikova, 2010; Bleakley & Chin, 2004; Chiswick & Miller, 1995, 2002, 2007; Dustmann, 1994; Dustman & van Soest, 2001 & 2002; Dustmann & Fabbri, 2003; Kossoudji, 1988). Such studies also show that those migrants whose native languages show the greatest distance from the languages of the host community are least successful in professional adjustment and success (see especially Adsera & Pytlikova, 2010). Needless to say, English is the assumed linguistic capital in such studies, given its global status in higher education, development, and professional communication. Besides, in most of the developed countries where migrants move to (such as UK, USA, Canada, or Australia), English is the native language. Research based on these orientations contribute to the popular discourses of Global English and lead to the frenzied acquisition of English language in many countries, as governments prepare their citizens for higher education and professional advancement and, in many cases, migration and remittances as the path to development. Such studies and discourses miss the subtle tensions, conflicts, and variations in the migration- development nexus that we attempt to capture in our qualitative study. We list some of the complicating factors which motivated our research: 1. It is difficult to think of a single language as holding unqualified power as the language of success or progress in late modernity, even in such an obvious case as English. Communication in business, technology, and education is becoming more multilingual in traditionally English- dominant countries, such as UK or USA. Even if we concede that elite European languages have