The first chapter provides an introduction to the field of multilingual development explaining its scientific and societal relevance. The discussion begins with an overview of current globalization and migration processes where, based on OECD data of the past ten years, international migration streams receive illustration and substantiation. Case studies of prominent urban areas include London, Hamburg, Toronto, Vancouver, New York City, San Francisco, Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Dubai. Multilingualism, as such, is not a new phenomenon and may be considered a defining condition of the human species. However, the speed with which it keeps spreading and the density that it developed in urban areas are relatively recent phenomena without historical precedents. These processes are not universal, though. While the Western World appears to have rediscovered multilingualism after a long period of pervasive monolingualism, China currently appears on its way towards a form of social organization in which monolingualism and homogeneity are of paramount importance. The chapter further addresses the social hierarchy of languages and the special role of English in it.

Singapore is an improbable success story in the design and implementation of education reforms that transformed a small, resource starved port into a nation, indispensable to first the region, then globally. This chapter illustrates policy formulation and implementation challenges in unifying a school system that had been segmented by media of instruction to aid rapid and transformative industrialisation. It refers to the successes in enhancing access to education and the difficulties posed by hasty and poorly implemented policy of school bilingualism and documents how these were overcome. This globally oriented system embraced choice, competition and branding and changed curricular and pedagogic frameworks, enhanced TVET, re-positioned the universities and upgraded teacher education. While this has underpinned a system which ranks highly in all international comparisons of educational quality, the policies and practices are not a package or simple formula for others to embrace, they are a product of time and place and are likely to change as Singapore looks to the future.