The Cultural Capital of Migrants and Language Maintenance across Generations: Vietnamese Families in Australia

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how the Vietnamese language has been maintained across generations in Vietnamese families in Melbourne, Australia. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital and in-depth interviews with 20 first-generation Vietnamese migrant parents and 18 second-generation Vietnamese Australian children, this study reveals that parents and children attempt to preserve the language because of its benefits in communicating and strengthening the relationships among family members, as well as in supporting study and work in Australia. It also highlights that parents and children act as active agents in the process of developing their resources into cultural capital in a multicultural society.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Prof. Karen Farquharson and A/Prof. Deb Dempsey for their valuable advice and suggestions during this study. I’m also grateful to A/Prof. Lan Anh Hoang and Dr. Nhan Phan for their generous feedback on the previous drafts. The paper benefitted from the insightful comments of the editors and the three anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ The “White Australia Policy” was the restrictions on “non-white” immigration to Australia since 1901.

² The 2001 census revealed that among Vietnam-born people aged 15 years and over, the participation rate in the labor force was 60.6% and the unemployment rate was 17.7% (The corresponding rates in the total Australian population were 63.0% and 7.4%, respectively). Of the 74,260 Vietnam-born people who were employed, 42.6% were employed in a skilled occupation, 30.7% in a semiskilled occupation, and 26.8% in unskilled work. (The corresponding rates in the total Australian population are 52.6%, 28.9%, and 18.6%, respectively.) Of the 150,160 Vietnam-born people who spoke a language other than English at home, 55.7% spoke English very well or well, and 43.3% spoke English poorly or not at all (Thomas 2005).

³ All names in this paper have been changed to protect research participants’ privacy.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Giang Tran

Giang Tran received a PhD in Sociology from Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia, in 2018. She has worked as a lecturer of Faculty of Family Studies and Social Work, University of Culture, Hanoi, Vietnam. She is currently a research, advocacy and policy officer at the Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health, Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests include migration, gender, migrant families, migrant and refugee women’s health. She has published many articles, conference papers, book chapters, and policy briefs in these fields.