When the second language becomes the first: family language policies in Polish return migrant families from English-speaking countries

Abstract

The study focuses on Polish families returning from migration to English-speaking countries and their family language policies in a language-shift situation. It aims to discover what language(s) parents and children associate their identities with and how they navigate through their development. The data for the project comes from content analysis of 4 interviews with selected families. The results show a discrepancy between parental ideologies and their adolescent children’s linguistic identities. While parents aim to maintain and develop the heritage language, Polish, abroad and on return, the children’s primary identity is associated with English, which causes their difficulties in reintegration into the Polish school environment on return. Additionally, the age of return matters: young adolescents (aged 10-15) continue to seek ties with English-speaking communities and plan to return to the country of their childhood while younger children (their siblings) who returned at the time of onset of Polish school time managed to adapt to the new situation. The study’s findings should be relevant to parents, teachers and psychologists who wish to aid the children in developing harmonious bilingualism.

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