ABSTRACT
Global migration has increased considerably over the past few decades and at present has reached an all-time high. Movement of people across borders is motivated mostly by economic or political forces and is expected to continue to grow (Klee 2011). As a consequence of migration, minority languages, and therefore minority-language speakers, can be found in countries all over the world. Usually, first-generation immigrants learn the majority language in different degrees, whereas the second and subsequent generations are raised in a more complex linguistic setting, with results ranging from maintenance to total loss of the minority language (Veltman 2000). Guijarro Fuentes and Marinis explained how the outcome depends on many factors, such as socioeconomic status, whether the child is raised in a mixed-language family, institutional support, and socioaffective aspects; they concluded ‘Many of these children, despite being raised by monolingual or bilingual parents of the heritage language, end up either being monolingual speakers of the dominant language of the society or acquire an incomplete system for the heritage language spoken at home’ (2011: 228).
