arrow
Return

Assimilation in multilingual cities

delete2015-02-24
delete5
delete
OA
AI
J
Javier Ortega *
G
Grégory Verdugo
DOI:10.1007/s00148-015-0549-9delete
deleteOriginal
deleteShare
deleteSave
View PDF
Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
We characterise how the assimilation patterns of minorities into the strong and the weak language differ in a situation of asymmetric bilingualism. Using large variations in language composition in Canadian cities from the 2001 and 2006 Censuses, we show that the differences in the knowledge of English by immigrant allophones (i.e., the immigrants with a mother tongue other than English and French) in English-majority cities are mainly due to sorting across cities. Instead, in French-majority cities, learning plays an important role in explaining differences in knowledge of French. In addition, the presence of large anglophone minorities deters much more the assimilation into French than the presence of francophone minorities deters the assimilation into English. Finally, we find that language distance plays a much more important role in explaining assimilation into French, and that assimilation into French is much more sensitive to individual characteristics than assimilation into English. Some of these asymmetric assimilation patterns extend to anglophone and francophone immigrants, but no evidence of learning is found in this case.
Keywords:
Immigration
Assimilation
Language policies
Minorities
AI Summary

AI Summary

Key information extracted from the uploaded paper, including a brief overview, abstract, background, key highlights, visual analysis, and future outlook.

Journal

Journal of Population Economics cover
Journal of Population Economics
IF:
3
Papers:
1.5K
Citations:
3.3K

Organization

U
university of london
Scholars:
21.5W
Papers: 19.7W
Citations: 305
C
city st georges, university of london
Scholars:
1.2W
Papers: 1.1W
Citations: 12