新作坊

The effects of education, parental background and ethnic concentration on language

摘要：

This paper studies the acquisition of language capital of immigrants to Germany. The analysis is based on a detailed survey data set. Speaking abilities and writing abilities are investigated for both male and female migrants. The study has three main objectives. Firstly, to investigate in detail the effect of education on language acquisition. For this purpose, extensive information on pre- and post migration education is utilized, and education is broken down to its different components. Secondly, to investigate the effect of parental education on language acquisition. And thirdly, to analyze the importance of living in ethnic enclaves on language ability. The analysis reveals that parental education has a surprisingly strong effect on both components of language capital, while the effect of ethnic concentration is quite moderate.