Ethnic Differences in Language Skills: How Individual and Family Characteristics Aid and Prohibit the Linguistic Integration of Children of Immigrants

Abstract

Proficiency in the language of a new country is perhaps the most important precondition for the successful integration of immigrants in various other integration aspects, like educational and vocational success, interethnic relations and ethnic identify formation. Explaining ethnic disparities in linguistic integration therefore has the potential to aid our understanding of ethnic differences along various other integration dimensions. In the present contribution, we first demonstrate substantial heterogeneity of adolescents’ language proficiency in four European countries depending on their ethnic origin and their migration history. In order to further understanding these differences we examine very different individual and family factors that can be hypothesised to influence language learning processes. Besides an influence of social background on language learning, we show that ethnic specific factors such as language use in the family are at least partly relevant for the language acquisition process.