Dynamic multilingualism of refugee families meets monolingual language policy in German ECE institutions

ABSTRACT

Studies on Family Language Policy state that the shape of family multilingualism is embedded in diverse conditions within and outside the family, like historical, social and political factors, which influence family language practices. In this regard, the monolingual orientation of early childhood education (ECE) institutions in many European nation states is in tension with dynamic family multilingualism, thereby constituting a potentially conflict-prone relationship. In this article, we would like to illustrate this with regard to language policy in ECE institutions in Germany, drawing on empirical data from a new teaching research project on Family Language Policy of multilingual, (newly) migrated and/or refugee families. Our analyses reveal that parents are aware of selection in education based on language as well as a hierarchical language order. Family language practices are shaped against the background of the prevailing language policy in ECE institutions.

KEYWORDS:

• Family Language Policy
• dynamic multilingualism
• early childhood education
• teaching research project

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Following the German term ‘neu zugewandert’, we use the term newly migrated (or newly arrived) to refer to a (refugee) migration from the years 2015 onwards. The brackets are also intended to express that these statements may also be relevant for other migration families, thus questioning the division between the newly arrived and the long-established.

2 The multilingual project team, consisting of the two authors, Julie A. Panagiotopoulou (project leader) and Yasemin Uçan (co-leader), as well as a PhD student Diana Samani, also have similar (language) biographical experiences.

3 Although the term Dari is more common in Afghanistan, the interviewees utilised Farsi to refer to their language, so we have adopted this as well. At this point, we would like to express our sincere thanks to Diana Samani.

4 Written informed consent was obtained from all participants. Participants received information about the aims and procedure of the study, the anonymization procedure, and information about data protection requirements at the University of Cologne.

5 All person names and places were pseudonymized.

6 In the German educationsystem there are hierarchized distinctions between different types of schools and access to them is made dependent on school grades in primary school. This means that children are assigned to one of three types of schools after the fourth grade. The assignment of a child to one of the school types determines future educational and career opportunities as well as access to higher education. Selection mechanisms are often linked to the (lack of) language skills of children from migrant families (in detail, see Gomolla & Radtke, 2009). The findings of Gomolla and Radtke have also been confirmed by various international comparative OECD studies and state that subsequent educational pathways depend on the social background of the children.

7 Against the backdrop of educational inequality, the concept of educational partnership has become established in Germany. The aim is to counteract this existing inequality, which also affects language education, through cooperation between parents and the educational institution. The activities of the actors are embedded in inter-institutional and migration-societal hierarchies, which make cooperation between families and educational institutions in language education difficult (Kämpfe et al., 2023; for a critical view of ‘educational partnership’ in German ECE institutions, see Betz et al., 2017).