Multilingual children living in multilingual families: investigating factors impacting children’s happiness

ABSTRACT

Due to successive immigration waves, many European countries are experiencing a rise in ethnic minoritized families. In this study, we investigate how risks and resources associated with multilingualism at the individual and the family level shape minoritized children’s reported happiness and whether these effects are independent of children’s ethnic and national identification and perceived family cohesion. We use data collected from over 800 children (ages 10–12) living in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern region of Belgium. Results from multinomial logistic regression models on reported happiness provide robust evidence that speaking and understanding two languages well is beneficial for children compared to being fluent in only one. Moreover, the positive effects of multilingualism are not attributable to children’s ethnic and national identification, factors that are beneficial in themselves. Our results further suggest that differences in mother–child language use and brokering are associated with lower levels of happiness, independently of family cohesion and individual factors. The findings of this study yield important insights for current political debates surrounding policies associated with multilingualism.

KEYWORDS:

• Happiness
• minoritized children
• multilingualism
• minoritized families
• risks
• resilience

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 We refer to Dutch as the institutional language of Flanders because it is the official language of the region and dominant in institutions including the school system. This designation has a more neutral connotation than majority language. Antwerp recently became a majority-minority city (Crul, 2015; Stad Antwerpen, 2019). Consequently, Dutch may not be the primary home language for a majority of Antwerp families.

2 We use ‘multilingual’ rather than ‘bilingual’ because many children speak (or at least have familiarity with) more than one minority language. For example, in Berber-speaking Moroccan-Belgian households (the largest minority group in Flanders), children commonly speak Dutch (the majority language), Berber as the main HL but also some Arabic, the language of Islam. Some parents also use words in French or Spanish, languages still present in Morocco from the Spanish and French colonisation.