Ethnolinguistic Composition Research Articles

Like the swing of the pendulum: The history of government-sponsored rural settlements in São Paulo, Brazil (1820s–1920s)

ABSTRACT This paper studies the history of government-sponsored rural settlements in the province/state of São Paulo, Brazil, as a pendular movement, whose points of reversion depended on the interests of a landowning elite to obtain labour for newly expanding plantations from the 1820s to the 1920s. Faltering infrastructure and ill-defined property rights over public lands were persistent constraints to the development of such rural settlements. Part of this failure can be attributed to a lack of State capacity and part to the opposition of plantation owners to the settling of independent smallholdings. The paper complements this historical-institutional analysis with a quantitative description of such settlements in 1898–1920. These late government-sponsored rural settlements showed the potential to grow in demographic and economic terms and had an overall demographic and occupational composition well aligned with the goal of creating a family-based peasantry. However, there were enormous heterogeneities in ethno-linguistic composition, educational attainment, and economic prosperity between and within such rural settlements, which point to idiosyncratic features that should be taken into account in future research assessing the short- and long-run effects of immigration and settlement policies in Brazil.

Home language use and shift in Australia: Trends in the new millennium.

The 25 million Australians today are identified with more than 300 ancestries. People's home language use and shift patterns had demonstrated great variations as more immigrants from Asia-Pacific regions entered Australia. The ethnolinguistic composition of Australia's population had undergone substantial changes in the last few decades. Based on the statistics from Australian censuses, the present paper aims to analyze the changes of people's home language use and the shift patterns in the new Millennium. Five sets of census data released by Australian Bureau of Statistics were adopted as the secondary data source and descriptive analysis was conducted to disclose the dynamic picture of different home languages in Australia after 2000. The results suggest that the number of home language speakers in Australia has soared up quickly in the last two decades and great variations have been found between the traditional European migrant groups and the newly Asian arrivers. Mandarin has overtaken Italian and Greek to become the most populous home language other than English used in Australia since 2011 and great regional differences were also found to exist among different states and territories. Moreover, the ranking order of different home language speakers had changed considerably as compared with that in the last century. The language shift rates of different language communities and their cross-tabulations with generations, gender, age, and duration of residence in the latest available censuses after 2000 also revealed diverse developmental directions. The findings give us a glimpse of the current status of different home languages in Australia and help us to identify the potential factors impacting the shifting trends of different language communities. A better understanding of the language needs of different migrant communities may further help policymakers set more effective plans to accommodate an increasingly diverse Australian society.

Mapping sounds in the commercial linguistic landscape of Kuwait: A workable solution

The field of linguistic landscape research has shown considerable interest in visual communication in the urban global landscape in recent years. This paper explores Kuwait's linguistic landscape through an examination of shop signs displayed in commercial streets. A total of five hundred and ninety-nine photographs of shop signs on three streets in three different areas were taken and categorized. The streets were selected based on traffic and diversity. The linguistic landscape framework facilitates an understanding of the progress of the urban space as well as the relevance and dominance of language(s). The present study considers not only the signs' content but also the language(s) covered and their hierarchy, location and function in the urban community and space. The findings indicate that the linguistic landscape formed by Kuwait's signs is influenced by the shops' geographical location, prestige, and ethnolinguistic composition. While the major focus of mainstream research is the collection and analysis of (shop) signs, the present project goes beyond that to offer a solution to the problem of proper sound production of Arabized English shop names that uses designated individual orthographic symbols in Arabic to represent both the consonants and vowels of English. The solution foregrounds and eases the process of pronouncing businesses' names as well as understanding their nature and the services they offer with minimal effort.

Psychosocial impacts on the Christchurch Muslim community following the 15 March terrorist attacks: a mixed-methods study protocol

IntroductionOn 15 March 2019, a white supremacist gunman opened fire in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, during Friday prayers, killing 51 people and injuring 40. The event was witnessed...

The Relationship between Ethno-Linguistic Composition of Social Networks and Activity Space: A Study Using Mobile Phone Data

This study is a contribution to the discussion on the ethnic segregation cycle, through the examination of individuals’ activity spaces—including residence and workplace—and from the perspective of social networks. Bridging social ties can be a key factor in higher minority inclusion and in breaking the vicious circle of segregation. We compare the spatial behaviour of two ethno-linguistic population groups living in Tallinn, Estonia’s capital city (Estonian-speaking majority and Russian-speaking minority), each of which have co- and interethnic social networks, through the use of mobile positioning (call detail records) and call-graph data. Among our main findings, we show firstly that interethnic social networks are more common for the Russian-speaking minority population. The probability of having an interethnic network is related to the ethno-linguistic composition of the residential district concerned; districts with a higher proportion of residents from another ethnic group tend to favour interethnic networks more. Secondly, the activity space is related to the ethno-linguistic composition of the social networks. Spatial behaviour is most expansive for Estonian speakers with co-ethnic networks, and most constrained for Russian speakers with co-ethnic networks. At the same time, speakers of Estonian and Russian with interethnic networks show rather similar spatial behaviours: They tend to visit more districts where the proportion of people from the other ethno-linguistic group is higher. Interethnic networks are therefore related to spatial behaviour, which can indicate interethnic meeting points and locations, something that is regarded as being important in assimilation and segregation cycle theories.

Ethnolinguistic diversity in New Zealand: A socioeconomic analysis

Abstract Changes in New Zealand’s immigration policy from the 1980s onwards contributed to growing diversity in the source country of migrants, and has transformed the ethnolinguistic composition of the country’s population in recent decades. The number of people who speak non-official languages is increasing, while the proportion of the English-speaking monolingual population is gradually decreasing. Many immigrants have been unable to integrate into the local labour market at levels commensurate with their qualifications and prior experience, however, and previous studies have noted the institutional and attitudinal hurdles to their integration. This study employs data from five censuses between 1996 and 2018 to explore the socio-economic characteristics of individuals who speak non-official languages (grouped according to the extent of their reported multilingualism), compared with monolingual English speakers and the total population. Competence in non-official languages is increasingly becoming an Asian-related phenomenon in terms of birthplace and ethnic and religious affiliations. The more multilingual cohorts displayed substantially higher levels of educational qualifications than other groups, and a strong increase in the proportion employed over this timespan. Modest income levels nevertheless indicate enduring underemployment. Indicators from the last two census years suggest improved workplace integration of ethnolinguistically diverse individuals.

Meritocracy and Community in Twenty-First-Century Poland

Poland has never been as homogenous as its ethnolinguistic composition would lead one to believe. In fact, it is every bit as diverse as countries with sharp linguistic, racial, or religious divides. The only difference is that the conflicts and tensions expressed elsewhere between ascriptive communities are experienced in Poland within a shared label of identity. Just because two Poles speak the same language, get baptized in the same church, and identify as Polish does not mean that they define Poland in the same way. In reality, there are at least two Polands today, and the conflict between them has intensified in recent years. This cultural divide is more complicated and crosscutting than any handy categories of rich and poor, young and old, urban and rural, Catholic and secular. There are tendencies that link these various categories, but there is a deeper clash that cuts right through them. At the root of this division is a chasm of incomprehension involving the fundamental and rival concepts of merit and community.

Tracing the ethnic origins of enslaved Africans in Grenada

ABSTRACTThe southeastern Caribbean island of Grenada has been excluded from studies concerned with the demographics of the trans-atlantic slave trade and its impact on the formation of African diasporic identities and cultures. Using Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, plantation lists, newspaper advertisements, and the multi-ethnic danced ceremony, Nation Dance, this article focuses on the demographics of the slave trade between 1669–1808 and the ethno-linguistic composition of Grenadian slave society. It demonstrates that various groups of enslaved Africans over time forged neo-African ethnic identities that remained visible in Nation Dance and archival material. In Nation Dance, inter-African blending and borrowing is evident, illustrating the complex ways whereby enslaved Africans and their descendants reconstructed their identities and cultures in the Atlantic world. Additionally, this article considers the limits of the Voyages Database and suggests ways in which other evidence may be used to understand the ethno-linguistic backgrounds of enslaved Grenadians.

Endogamy and income in native couples: the case of Finland

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to study two native and equal population groups, Finnish speakers and Swedish speakers in Finland, to examine whether there is income variation across couples that differ on ethno-linguistic composition, and if such variation can be attributed to differences in education, educational homogamy and other observable characteristics.Design/methodology/approachUsing detailed register-based household data, the authors estimate OLS models to compare endogamous and exogamous couples with respect to income of the man, the woman, and both partners, respectively.FindingsEndogamous Swedish-speaking couples are found to have on average 25 per cent higher income than other couples. The advantage is not related to differences in educational homogamy, but primarily to man’s income, and roughly half of the income difference is explained by the higher educational level of Swedish-speaking men in endogamous couples. Although women in endogamous Swedish-speaking couples are higher educated than other women, and there is a higher degree of educational homogamy in these couples, their education has only a modest bearing on the income differential.Originality/valueIn the case of Finland, educational homogamy does not affect income variation across native couples that differ on ethno-linguistic composition. Endogamous mate selection seems to increase economic inequality, uphold gender inequality, and help the native minority group in sustaining its own community.

Ethno-Linguistic Exogamy and Divorce: Does Marital Duration Matter?

ABSTRACTThis research examines whether the exogamy effect on the divorce risk varies over marital duration. Registry data from 1970 to 2003 allow us to observe couples in exogamous and endogamous ethno-linguistic marriages (Finnish speakers and Swedish speakers in Finland). We find that an elevated divorce risk of exogamous couples, which has been observed in numerous studies, is not typical of recently initiated marriages only, because it does not attenuate over marital duration. Marital problems that lead to divorce seem to be more common among exogamous couples than among endogamous couples. We argue that these patterns are likely due to group-specific differences in attitudes toward marriage. The argument is supported by a persistent difference in the divorce risk across endogamous Finnish- and Swedish-speaking marriages, and by the variation in divorce risk by ethno-linguistic composition of the couples in a regional context where minority group behaviors are more likely absorbed into majority group behaviors.

Subnational diversity in Sub-Saharan Africa: Insights from a new dataset

This paper presents a new dataset on subnational ethnolinguistic and religious diversity in Sub-Saharan Africa covering 36 countries and almost 400 first-level administrative units. We use population censuses and large-scale household surveys to compile detailed data on the ethnolinguistic composition of each region and match all reported ethnicities to Ethnologue, a comprehensive catalog of world languages. This matching allows us to standardize the notion of an ethnolinguistic group and account for relatedness between language pairs, a correlate of shared history and culture, when calculating diversity indices. Exploiting within-country variation provided by our new dataset, we find that local public goods provision, as reflected in metrics of education, health, and electricity access, is negatively related to ethnolinguistic diversity, but only if the underlying basic languages are first aggregated into larger families or if linguistic distances between groups are taken into consideration. In other words, only deep-rooted diversity, based on cleavages formed in the distant past, is strongly inversely associated with a range of regional development indicators. Furthermore, we show that subnational diversity has been remarkably persistent over the past two-three decades implying that population sorting in the short to medium run is unlikely to bias our main findings.

Subnational Diversity in Sub-Saharan Africa: Insights from a New Dataset

This paper presents a new dataset on subnational ethnolinguistic diversity in Sub-Saharan Africa covering 36 countries and almost 400 first-level administrative units. We compile detailed data on the ethnolinguistic composition of each region using population censuses and large-scale household surveys and match all reported ethnicities to Ethnologue, the most complete classifier of world languages. This matching allows to standardize the notion of an ethnolinguistic group and account for the relatedness between language pairs when calculating diversity indices. We exploit this high-quality dataset to investigate the connection between diversity, as captured by fractionalization and polarization indices, and development indicators at the subnational level. Educational and health outcomes, electricity access, and nighttime luminosity are all negatively related to diversity, even after controlling for country fixed effects and a rich set of regional characteristics, but only if the underlying ethnolinguistic groups are sufficiently aggregated into more basic language families or if linguistic similarities between them are taken into account. In other words, only deep-rooted diversity based on cleavages formed in the distant past is strongly inversely associated with regional development. Furthermore, we show that subnational diversity is remarkably persistent over time implying that reverse causality is unlikely to bias our main findings.

Trading hard hats for combat helmets: The economics of rebellion in eastern Ukraine

Using new micro-level data on violence in Eastern Ukraine, this paper evaluates the relative merits of ‘identity-based’ and ‘economic’ explanations of civil conflict. The first view expects rebellion to be most likely in areas home to the geographic concentration of ethnolinguistic minorities. The second expects more rebel activity where the opportunity costs of insurrection are low. Evidence from the armed conflict in Ukraine supports the second view more than the first. A municipality’s prewar employment mix is a more robust predictor of rebel activity than local ethnolinguistic composition. Municipalities more exposed to trade shocks with Russia experienced a higher intensity of rebel violence throughout the conflict. Such localities also fell under rebel control earlier – and took longer for the government to liberate – than municipalities where the labor force was less dependent on exports to Russia.

The presence of minority languages in linguistic landscapes in Amsterdam and Friesland (the Netherlands)

AbstractThis article describes an investigation of linguistic landscapes in the Netherlands. By means of a detailed quantitative analysis, it explores the extent to which the linguistic landscape reflects the languages spoken by the speech community. The study took place in both the capital city of Amsterdam, which has many immigrants and foreign tourists, and in the province of Friesland, which is home to a Frisian-speaking minority. The main finding is that in the linguistic landscape in both field sites, Dutch and English prevail, whereas minority languages have a limited presence. Differences in the ethnolinguistic composition of Amsterdam and Friesland's populations are partly reflected in differences between the linguistic landscapes.

Language choice in multilingual encounters in transnational workplaces

This paper is based on research conducted in banks in the international banking centre of Luxembourg. Operating in the globalised context of international banking and multilingual Luxembourg, financial institutions are an ideal focal point for investigating policy and practices in complex multilingual and transnational work spaces. Two theoretical models are the primary frameworks used to explore top-down management (explicit official language policy) and employees' practices and beliefs (implicit policy). The database for the study includes a first phase of interviews with management in 10 banks, followed by a second phase of questionnaires and focus groups with employees in three case study international banks. Taking an exclusively bottom-up perspective, this paper explores employees' complex practices through genres of communication. An analysis of employees' broad frequency patterns indicates that English is the language most frequently used alongside others. A number of languages are flexibly used in meetings, informal communication and more hybrid genres (emails and presentations). The ethnolinguistic composition of employees and transactional/relational functions of language are the two most important bottom-up pressures on language choices. However, above all, English emerges as an essential lingua franca for involving and including all employees in these contexts.

Missionization and the Persistence of Native Identity on the Colonial Frontier of Baja California

The indigenous groups incorporated into the Spanish missions of Alta and Baja California faced a variety of challenges during the colonial period and experienced a wide range of outcomes in the persistence of native identity. The indigenous Paipai community of Santa Catarina, located in northern Baja California, is composed of the direct descendants of native peoples who lived and worked at the Dominican mission of Santa Catalina and is one of the few remaining native communities in Baja California. Through the examination of a mission census dating to 1834, this article considers the demographic parameters of life at Santa Catalina as well as the ethnolinguistic composition of the mission's indigenous population. This analysis points to two important patterns that likely had implications for the persistence of native identity at the mission. First, the mission's native population does not appear to have suffered from the demographic collapse associated with introduced diseases. Second, the native population at Santa Catalina consisted of speakers of at least three languages and was drawn from a wide geographic area. The diversity of the native population at Santa Catalina may have provided the mission neophytes the opportunity to form a larger and stronger social group that could draw on various geographical homelands for support and refuge during the mission period.

Economic Nationalism and Economic Integration: The Austro-Hungarian Empire in the Late Nineteenth Century

This paper seeks to reconcile two seemingly contradictory strands in the literature on economic development in the late nineteenth century Habsburg Empire - one emphasizing the centrifugal impact of rising intra-empire of nationalism, the other stressing significant improvements in market integration across the empire. We argue that the process of market integration was systematically asymmetric, shaped by intensifying intra-empire nationality conflicts. While grain markets in Austria-Hungary became overall more integrated over time, they also became systematically biased: regions with a similar ethno-linguistic composition of their population came to display significantly smaller price gaps between each other than regions with different compositions. The emergence and persistence of this differential integration cannot be explained by changes in infrastructure and transport costs, simple geographical features or asymmetric integration with neighbouring regions abroad. Instead, differential integration along ethno-linguistic lines was driven by the formation of ethno-linguistic networks. Finally, the analysis shows that the emerging pre-war regional integration patterns – shaped by nationalist sentiment – effectively anticipated the post-war settlement: the fault lines along which the Habsburg Empire was to break up eventually are evident in the price data about a quarter of a century or so before the outbreak of the First World War.

On the origins of border effects: insights from the Habsburg Empire

What are the origins of border effects on trade and why do borders continue to matter in periods of increasing economic integration? We explore the hypothesis that border effects emerged as a result of asymmetric economic integration in the unique historical setting of the multi-national Habsburg Empire prior to the First World War. While markets tended to integrate mainly due to improved infrastructure, ethno-linguistic networks had persistent trade diverting effects. We find that the political borders which separated the empire’s successor states after the First World War became visible in the economy from the mid-1880s onwards, already 25–30 years before the First World War. This effect of a ‘border before a border’ cannot be explained by factors such as administrative barriers, physical geography, changes in infrastructure or patterns of integration with neighbouring regions outside of the Habsburg customs and monetary union. However, controlling for the changing ethno-linguistic composition of the population across the regional capital cities of the empire does explain most of the estimated border effects.

Indians in Malaya: Some Aspects of Their Immigration and Settlement (1786-1957).

List of illustrations List of tables Preface Abbreviations Glossary of Indian, Malay and other local terms Aide-memoire Part I. Indian Immigration into British Malaya: Origins and Trends: 1. Indians in pre-British Malaya 2. Causes of Indian immigration into British Malaya 3. Types of migrants and recruitment or movement 4. Emigration-immigration law and practice 5. Flow and characteristics of migration Part II. The Indian Population of Malaya: Growth and Associated Characteristics: 6. Growth and structure 7. Pattern and distribution 8. Settlement characteristics 9. Ethno-linguistic composition Part III. Indians in the Modern Malayan Economy: 10. Agriculture and industry 11. Communications and commerce Epilogue Appendices Select bibliography Index.