Aims and objectives: This study examines the language anxiety that occurs in immigrants' daily lives when speaking the heritage language and the majority language, both in their host country and during visits to their home country. It compares the levels of heritage language anxiety and majority language anxiety across three generations of the Turkish immigrant community in the Netherlands and explores the link between immigrants' language anxiety, and sociobiographical (i.e. generation, gender, education) and language background variables (i.e. age of acquisition, self-perceived proficiency, frequency of language use).Design: A Likert scale-based questionnaire was administered to 116 participants across three generations who reported their language anxiety levels when speaking the heritage language and the majority language in three social contexts (i.e. family, friendship and speaking with native speakers).Findings: Statistical analyses revealed that heritage language anxiety and majority language anxiety were prevalent in immigrants' daily life, and that levels of both forms of anxiety differed across generations, and in different daily life situations. First-and second-generation immigrants typically experienced majority language anxiety, while second-and predominantly third-generation immigrants suffered from heritage language anxiety. Relationships emerged between language background variables and both forms of anxiety, but only in certain situations. These findings suggest that language background variables on their own may be insufficient to explain immigrant 2 language anxiety in certain social contexts (i.e. within family). Rather than merely language background factors, a variety of other issues within social, cultural and national currents must be considered when examining language anxiety in the immigrant context. Implications:Taking an interdisciplinary approach that combines language contact and foreign language anxiety/second language anxiety research, this study suggests that the concept of foreign language anxiety/second language anxiety should be expanded beyond the confines of the classroom in order to include daily interactions immigrant or minority communities.Originality: This study contributes to the limited body of evidence on the topic of language anxiety in immigrant contexts and presents a new construct 'majority language anxiety'.

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Drawing on questionnaire and interview data, this study explores the process of language maintenance and shift across three generations of Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands. It compares three generations of Turkish-Dutch bilinguals by examining age and place of language learning, self-rated language proficiency, and language choices in six domains (home, school, work, friends, media and leisure time activities, and cognitive activities). Furthermore, it investigates bilinguals’ experiences, motivations for learning languages and attitudes towards bilingualism. Findings suggest that following the typical pattern of language shift described by Mario Saltarelli and Susan Gonzo in 1977, language history, self-rated language proficiency and current language practices of third-generation children differ from those of first- and second-generation bilinguals. Consequently, possible language shift among third-generation bilinguals causes socioemotional pressure about maintaining the Turkish language, triggering intergenerational tensions in Turkish immigrant families. At the same time, the perceived need to shift to Dutch for social and economic reasons causes immigrant children to experience tensions and ambiguities in the linguistic connections between the family and other social domains (e. g. school, friendship). The findings evidence that the Turkish immigrant community in the Netherlands may no longer be as linguistically homogeneous as once observed. The dissolution of homogeneity can be a sign of social change in which maintaining the Turkish language has become a challenge, whereas speaking Dutch is a necessity of life in the Netherlands.

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