Linguistic Policies and Attitudes. the Case of Descendents of Immigrants in Catalonia

In Catalonia (Spain) there have been implemented integration policies initiatives which place focus on the creation of a common public culture, in which ‘Catalan should be the backbone of a common and multilingual project of coexistence, including the knowledge of the languages present in Catalonia (Catalan / Spanish / immigrants’ L1) as an element of progress and social mobility’ (Generalitat de Catalunya 2008, 49). Consequently, Catalan becomes the quintessential element which allows intercultural communication, social mobility and cohesion (Generalitat de Catalunya 2008, 2009, 2013). 

Therefore, without question, one of the most important dimensions of reaching this goal concerns the linguistic attitudes which immigrant children construct.

Within this framework, the objective of the present communication is to analyse the socio-demographic, socio-familiar and psycho-social, educational, and linguistic predictors which determine whether the linguistic attitudes are located above or under the average, in the case of descendents of immigrants from Ecuador, the rest of Hispano-America and Morocco.

The data presented was collected following the application of an attitude and self-identification questionnaire, as well as that of parallel linguistic competences tests in Catalan and Spanish. The main results suggest that, although when measured in a bivariate fashion there are numerous influential variables, when introduced into logistic regression models the most important connections are with the self-identification sphere, the birthplace (and implicitly the home language), and language use.

As significant conclusion it should be highlighted that different attitudinal profiles are observed, which raises questions about the policies developed.

This work is part of a larger research project funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of the Spanish Government (REF. EDU2014-54093-R) and by the Agency for Administration of University and Research Grants of the Catalan Government (REF. 2014 SGR 208).