Accessing Imagined Communities Through Multilingualism and Immersion Education

Abstract

In this article I apply constructs of language as economic and symbolic capital, transnationalism, investment, and imagined community to an analysis of interviews with immigrant parents living in Vancouver, Canada. These parents promote multilingualism by maintaining their family language and enrolling their children in French Immersion programmes. I argue that they view multilingualism as capital and invest in language education as a means of securing their children's access to various imagined language communities. Referring both to a transnational perspective and a national context of official bilingualism, they imagine that French Immersion education will enable their children to participate in a Canadian French-English bilingual community while maintaining the family language will ensure affiliation with their heritage language communities in Canada and abroad. In addition, they imagine that multilingualism will equip their children with valuable language resources that help transcend national borders. This discussion highlights the overlap and distinctions of theoretical constructs and raises questions about the objectives of language education and immersion programmes in an increasingly mobile and multilingual society.