Transnational experience, aspiration and family language policy

Abstract

Transnational and multilingual families have become commonplace in the 21 st century. Yet relatively few attempts have been made from applied and socio-linguistics perspectives to understand what is going on within such families; how their transnational and multilingual experiences impact on the family dynamics and their everyday life; how they cope with the new and ever-changing environment, and how they construct their identities and build social relations. In this article we start from the premise that bilingualism and multilingualism mean different things to different generations and individuals within the same family. Additive Bilingualism, which is often celebrated for the positive benefits of adding a second language and culture without replacing or displacing the first, cannot be taken for granted as a common experience of the individuals in transnational families. Using data gathered from a sociolinguistic ethnography of three multilingual and transnational families from China in Britain, we discuss the experiences of different generations and individuals in dealing with bilingualism and multilingualism and how their experiences affect the way individual family members perceive social relations and social structures and construct and present their own identities. The key argument we wish to put forward is that more attention needs to be paid to the diverse experiences of the individuals and to the `strategies they use to deal with the challenges of multilingualism, rather than the overall patterns of language maintenance and language shift.Keywords: transnational family, Chinese, Britain, generation, family ethnography Transnational and multilingual families are becoming more common in the UK as statistics suggest. The most recent census of England and Wales in 2011 recorded that 31% of children born in the UK had either one or both parents from another country (Hall, 2013). The census also showed that 4.2 million people (7.7% of the national population) spoke languages other than English as the main language (Office of National Statistics, 2013). Whilst there is considerable public interest in how transnational and multilingual families integrate into the broader British society (e.g. Brown 2013; Phillips 2013), especially how the children from transnational and multilingual backgrounds succeed or otherwise in the school system (e.g. Davies 2012; Doughty 2012; Royal Economic Society 2013), there are few attempts to understand what is going on within such families; how their transnational and multilingual experiences impact on the family dynamics and their everyday life; how they cope with the new and ever-changing environment, and how they construct their identities and build social relations.

“It would be nice if someone took the load off you” Arabic-speaking new-Australian mothers and the challenges of heritage language maintenance

“…In a globalised world, the mothers' international mobility played an important role in how they perceived and responded to their children's bilingualism (e.g., Lanza & Li Wei, 2016;Zhu Hua & Li Wei, 2016). Travelling back to the home country to immerse children in the heritage language is a common strategy among immigrant families around the world (Caldas, 2006;Grosjean, 2010) and for the mothers in our study, travelling back to their home countries was an effective way of fostering their children's fluency in Arabic.…”

“…Noor remarked, "it's the main language in the world now so anything they want to apply for (work/study) they will need English they will immediately be asked about English so I am all about them learning it". The mothers' concern for their children's ability to fit in and succeed is common in studies documenting the experiences of immigrant families as they negotiate their changing identities and language practices in the host society (e.g., Lanza & Li Wei, 2016;Zhu Hua & Li Wei, 2016).…”

Language, Ethnicity, and Belonging for the Children of Migrants in New Zealand

“…This means that Asians are a much smaller and so perhaps more visible minority in Christchurch, with its mainly Anglo-Celtic population, than in Auckland. Zhu and Li (2016) point out that the overseas Chinese in general have not prioritized the maintenance of their ethnic languages, but that their motivations for learning, maintaining, and using languages are associated with the families' and individuals' "sense of belonging and imagination" (p. 657) rather than necessity and opportunity, so we might expect the usual language shift (Fishman, 1991) to take place over a couple of generations. Li (2016, p. 8) attributes this rapid shift to the majority language in the place of settlement to overseas Chinese focusing on trying to learn the local language(s) as well as dispersed settlement patterns and the migrants being involved in service trades and thus interacting with the local population.…”

Closer to far away: transcending the spatial in transnational families’ online video calling

“…Multiple situatednesses across diverse spatial levels are significant to the way transnational or otherwise multi-local families perform their daily life (Schier 2016). While multilingualism often plays a part in the experiences of transnational families, language policy is seldom as a vital concern to parents and children (Hua and Wei 2016), as are emotions of love and longing. The notion of 'proximity', as associated in this study, is viewed as central in such emotional relations and potentially interdependent with a range of phenomena, including verbal language and sensing bodies (Andreassen et al 2018).…”