Discourse around educational language provisions for indigenous language minorities in developing contexts customarily focuses on aspects such as the technical, pedagogical or economic provisions made for them. However, there is evidence that one of the most important considerations in the success or failure of bilingual programmes is the extent to which marginal language communities participate in the design and implementation of their own language provisions. Reframing the problem in these terms means highlighting the role for democracy and equity, and ultimately the importance of distribution of power and economy in mother-tongue programmes. This suggests the need to develop a radically different conception and policy of multilingual schooling based on an approach to resource distribution in a politics of identity framework. In this paper, I propose a notion of linguistic citizenship as a way of capturing how issues of language may be accorded a central place on the arena of education and politics. The notion offers both sociopolitical and theoretical rationales for an integrative view of language policy and planning in the context of education, combining an academic and social analysis of language political issues that support a transformative approach to issues of language and democracy.