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Language Use and Family Transmission in Migration Context

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Trajectories and Origins: Survey on the Diversity of the French Population

Part of the book series: INED Population Studies ((INPS,volume 8))

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Abstract

This chapter analyses the foreign language usage of migrants to France over the last 50 years. The TeO survey enables us to place language usage in the context of individual linguistic repertoires and migration trajectories, taking account of social characteristics and transnational practices. The use of languages other than French evolves in response to strong competition from the majority language. Moreover, many immigrants from countries with historical colonial links to France spoke French even before arriving in the country.

After a first part devoted to immigrants’ linguistic skills and their command of French, the chapter then describes the profile of immigrants who continue to speak other languages, the context in which they use them, and the factors that favour their continued use, notably family transmission. The last part examines the extent to which family languages are mastered by descendants of immigrants after reaching adulthood. Placing different languages in perspective reveals the degree to which individuals acknowledge this transmission as a cultural inheritance and/or a resource that can also be mobilized outside the family sphere. Attitudes in this respect vary from one language to another.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See also Fishman 1991, on the “reversibility” of language loss.

  2. 2.

    See in particular D. Massey’s (2004) response to S. Huntington’s text: “Who are we?: the challenges to America’s national identity”.

  3. 3.

    See Jacques-Alain Benisti’s report, On the prevention of delinquency, The preliminary report of the prevention commission of the parliamentary group on internal security (October 2004) and the contributions and reactions to the “great debate on national identity’, launched in October 2009 by Eric Besson, which emphasized the importance of proficiency in French.

  4. 4.

    See glossary in Chap. 2 (Box 2.1) for definitions of the population categories mentioned in this chapter.

  5. 5.

    Concept proposed by Alba, Logan, Lutz and Stults, 2002.

  6. 6.

    The TeO survey methodology is presented in an Appendix at the end of the book.

  7. 7.

    We would like to thank Amélie Charruault (statistician for the TeO survey, INED) and Marc Thévenin (Statistical Methods department, INED), for their assistance at two stages of the analysis.

  8. 8.

    The questions read as follows: “What language or languages did your mother (father) speak to you when you were a child?” We therefore use the terms “received languages” and “reception of” a language (Filhon 2009a).

  9. 9.

    0.2% of immigrants said they did not speak a language transmitted during childhood; these respondents are excluded from the analysis.

  10. 10.

    Almost one hundred languages within this language family were reported in the survey, the most common being: Bambara, Comorien, Lingala, Malinké, Mandingue, Peul, Sango, Senoufo, Sérère, Soninké, Soussou, Wolof.

  11. 11.

    i.e. persons who reported receiving only one language from their parents during their childhood.

  12. 12.

    i.e. persons who received more than one language during childhood from their parents.

  13. 13.

    In this text, we have distinguished between the countries formerly under French administration (“F.A.” in the text) and other countries where, for historical reasons, French may have been present in the public sphere. Thus, in addition to the categories “Algeria” and “Morocco, Tunisia” used in the book, we have distinguished between the countries of sub-Saharan Africa in the first case – that we will identify in the sub-Saharan Africa group (see Chap. 2, Table 2.2 for the list of countries), part of the “Other African countries” group.

  14. 14.

    See Appendix 1 on teo.site.ined.fr/annexes.

  15. 15.

    In a study of Portuguese immigrants in France, Françoise Lévy noted that women, because of their contacts in the public space, were more exposed to French than men, who often work in sectors where French is not always spoken (Lévy 1977). In addition, the jobs performed by many immigrant women in Portugal – in personal services and as building caretakers – raise their exposure to the French language.

  16. 16.

    “During the past two weeks, how many times have you gotten together with friends; [and if once or more] among these friends, how many have the same origin as you?”

  17. 17.

    The notion of “transmission” implicitly includes a certain willingness to pass on a practice, a know-how, a cultural value. In the context of immigration, the “transmission” dimension of language usage may be intentional or otherwise (Filhon and Varro 2005).

  18. 18.

    For greater clarity, the term “immigrant parents” is used in this section to designate immigrants living with at least one child, concerned by the question: “What language do you speak with your children?”. Furthermore, our analysis continues to focus solely on those immigrants who arrived at age 17 years or older.

  19. 19.

    Note that the survey question generates a response that reflects an “average” language practice at the time of the survey, with no mention of differences in practices between different children living in France.

  20. 20.

    See Appendix 2 at teo.site.ined.fr/annexes.

  21. 21.

    See Appendix 3 at teo.site.ined.fr/annexes.

  22. 22.

    See Appendix 4 at teo.site.ined.fr/annexes.

  23. 23.

    “Do you maintain contact by letter, telephone or internet with your family or friends living in a country outside France, a DOM or a TOM?” Note that among older people, these contacts may become less frequent following the deaths of family members.

  24. 24.

    Because of the diversity of immigrant population profiles (time in country and social composition, proficiency in French, mixed parentage, etc.), the relations between transmission and gender are so complex that it is more instructive to run separate models for men and women to investigate the dynamics for specific groups rather than for immigrant parents as a whole.

  25. 25.

    The dynamics described in both sections of this chapter therefore run largely in parallel.

  26. 26.

    Only the command of parent-transmitted languages other than French can be analysed. The command of languages learned from exchanges with other close relatives (notably grandparents) or at school is excluded.

  27. 27.

    For more details, see Appendix 5 on teo.site.ined.fr/annexes.

  28. 28.

    Similar results were yielded by the TIES survey (Schneider et al. 2012).

  29. 29.

    See Appendix 6 at teo.site.ined.fr/annexes.

  30. 30.

    High levels of positive attitudes towards the acquisition of parents’ languages were also found among descendants of immigrants from Turkey in the survey TIES (The Integration of European Second Generations: Schneider et al. 2012); see also Raquel Matias’ doctoral thesis (2013).

  31. 31.

    The question covers various types of media: radio, television, press, Internet. Using them requires different levels of proficiency, but we cannot take the analysis further. Note that in some cases, the media are French-speaking.

  32. 32.

    112,147 pupils attended these courses from 1988 to 1990. Compared to the number of “foreign students” expected to take them, 35% of immigrants in Turkey were concerned, 32% of children of immigrants in Portugal, 28% of children of Spanish origin, 16% of children of Moroccan origin, etc. Statistics compiled by the French Ministry of National Education, cited by P. Simon (1997, footnote 8).

  33. 33.

    See Appendix 7 at teo.site.ined.fr/annexes.

  34. 34.

    See Appendix 8 at teo.site.ined.fr/annexes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut national d’études démographiques (INED), Paris, France

    Stephanie Condon

  2. DPM, Paris, France

    Corinne Régnard

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  1. Stephanie Condon
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  2. Corinne Régnard
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Correspondence to Stephanie Condon .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institut national d’études démographiques (INED), Paris, France

    Cris Beauchemin

  2. Institut national d’études démographiques (INED), Paris, France

    Christelle Hamel

  3. Institut national d’études démographiques (INED), Paris, France

    Patrick Simon

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Condon, S., Régnard, C. (2018). Language Use and Family Transmission in Migration Context. In: Beauchemin, C., Hamel, C., Simon, P. (eds) Trajectories and Origins: Survey on the Diversity of the French Population. INED Population Studies, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76638-6_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76638-6_10

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