People in contact, languages in contact. A multi-group analysis of the effects of interethnic contact on acculturation attitudes

Abstract

The present study aims to enhance previous knowledge on the role of interethnic contact as a tool to improve the linguistic integration of immigrants in bilingual receiving societies. We examined the effect of interethnic contact on natives’ support for immigrants’ language maintenance as well as on immigrants’ attitudes towards natives’ languages (in addition to L1 identification). The study was conducted in western Catalonia (Lleida), a region with a delicate sociolinguistic situation where two official languages coexist with several immigrant languages. Using a sample of 549 high school students, we carried out a series of regression analyses to estimate the average effect of interethnic contact and the relative importance of the different types of contact. The results obtained show a clear positive impact of interethnic contact on the integrative acculturation of immigrants: it enhances natives’ support for immigrants’ language maintenance, while also improving immigrants’ attitudes towards the natives’ languages (with no subtractive language effect). However, interethnic contact does not seem to help when the social status of the immigrant group is low. Implications for multilingual development in ethnically diverse societies are discussed.

This work was supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación of the Spanish government. [ref. no. FJC2020- 043896-I], the Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca – AGAUR of the Government of Catalonia [ref. no. 2021- SGR-699] and the European Union [ref. no. 101085440 - MULTILING-EU - ERASMUS-JMO-2022-HEI-TCH-RSCH]. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or EACEA. Neither the European Union nor the granting authorities can be held responsible for them