Language transmission and bilingual outcomes of descendants of Turkish immigrants in France, Germany and the Netherlands

Western European cities have experienced increasing cultural diversity due to families of immigrant origins. Individuals’ language patterns have been the centre of much debate, for social integration concerns or on the importance of language diversity within official monolingual contexts. Focusing on descendants of Turkish immigrants in six cities (Paris and Strasbourg in France, Berlin and Frankfurt in Germany, Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands), we explore parents’ language transmission during childhood and self-perceived proficiency in early adulthood, the latter used as an indicator of linguistic self-esteem within a sociological perspective (Bourdieu, 1991; Fishman 1991; Brizic, 2006; Norton, 2006). Approaching language outcomes as a consequence of collective processes, we aim to understand the extent to which linguistic self-esteem in each of the three countries is influenced by various factors. We investigate the role of parental linguistic capital and country of residence in shaping language patterns across Turkish descendants aged between 18 to 35, born in the country and with one or two parents born in Turkey. We used data from the Integration of the European Second Generation (TIES) survey, launched in 2003 to study descendants of immigrants in eight Western European countries.