Multilingual families and their position in European societies

Gabriel Alberto Ceballos Rodríguez,Mare Ainsaar

doi:10.31577/cas.2021.04.596

Abstract

The Institute of Social Sciences of the CSPS of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Košice is an interdisciplinary workplace of social sciences and humanities with a primary research focus on the area of Central Europe in the field of social psychology, sociology and history.

Highlights

Growing international migration flows and inter-ethnic marriages lead to an increasing diversification of the ethnic structure of families
Results show that multilingualism is closely related to recent immigration and the migration history of a country, but this relationship is not linear
The results of the study provide a basis to study their different dimensions in further detail, those related to identity formation and the internal and external motivations to develop an affiliation towards host countries

Summary

Introduction

Growing international migration flows and inter-ethnic marriages lead to an increasing diversification of the ethnic structure of families. Statistical information shows that binational families are a growing segment of the population in Europe (Sowa-Behtane, 2017). In 2014, the European Union had 55 million immigrants aged 15 – 64, making up 17.7 % of the population. These people lived in around 16.7 million “immigrant households” and in 9.4 million “mixed households”. European Union (EU) statistics show that the percentage of people living in immigrant or mixed households is growing (Eurostat, 2017). Research goal: The aim of this study is to analyse the diversity of multilingual families and to describe their social environment in Europe. We study the proportion of people living in multilingual families, their demographic background, and their integration into society. We classify certain European countries according to the characteristics of their multilingual households to better understand the environments in which multilingual families live

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion