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Multilingualism in Immigrant Communities

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Language Awareness and Multilingualism

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Language and Education ((ELE))

Abstract

Immigrant multilingualism is at the crossroads of many academic disciplines. Educational specialists, policy makers, linguists, social psychologists and immigration researchers are equally interested in immigrant multilingualism. In this paper, immigrant multilingualism is discussed from a variety of perspectives. Discussions surrounding language maintenance/shift, language loss, bilingual language acquisition, the relationship between school achievement and bilingualism, social inclusion and exclusion of immigrant groups are presented. As shown in the paper, a change of focus in the study of immigrant multilingualism is needed. Research on immigrant multilingualism needs to contribute to a better understanding of the language dynamics that take place in the contact between majority and minority languages in contexts of migration. Applied linguists and critical sociolinguists often argue that multilingualism ought to be seen as the norm. However, there is little discussion on how immigrant multilingualism should or could be accommodated in education. The paper presents a number of suggestions for future work on immigrant multilingualism.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of the Humanities, Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, 5000 LE, Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Kutlay Yağmur

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  1. Kutlay Yağmur
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Correspondence to Kutlay Yağmur .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept Res Methods Education, University of the Basque Country Dept Res Methods Education, Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain

    Jasone Cenoz

  2. UPV/EHU - IKERBASCQUE, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU - IKERBASCQUE, Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain

    Durk Gorter

  3. Faculty of Education, University of Auckland, School of Critic, Auckland, New Zealand

    Stephen May

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Yağmur, K. (2017). Multilingualism in Immigrant Communities. In: Cenoz, J., Gorter, D., May, S. (eds) Language Awareness and Multilingualism. Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02325-0_31-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02325-0_31-3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-02325-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-02325-0

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference EducationReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Education

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Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Multilingualism in Immigrant Communities
    Published:
    28 March 2017

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02325-0_31-3

  2. Multilingualism in Immigrant Communities
    Published:
    30 January 2017

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02325-0_31-2

  3. Original

    Multilingualism in Immigrant Communities
    Published:
    08 August 2016

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02325-0_31-1

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