Integration requirements and citizenship policies are associated with the pace of language acquisition among immigrants
Language acquisition is considered crucial to increase integration and cooperation between immigrants and natives. Research using Twitter data by scientists from TU Delft, the Max Planck Institute and the University of Groningen on the pace of language acquisition among immigrants in the EU points to interaction between integration requirements and citizenship policies. For instance, for countries with strict civic integration requirements, the more liberal the access to citizenship, the faster migrants acquire the new language.
The study analysed language acquisition with twitter posts over a period from January 2012 to December 2016, explains Sofia Gil-Clavel, researcher at TU Delft. "As an indication of language acquisition, we measured how long it took a user to tweet mainly in the language of the destination country for a month."
Strict versus loose integration requirements
The results show that immigrants in countries with loose or no integration requirements have similar average language acquisition times, regardless of how liberal the citizenship policy is. In countries with strict integration requirements and strict citizenship policies (Denmark, Austria and Germany), immigrants took longer to use the language than in the other EU countries.
“This could be a result of anti-immigrant attitudes of the majority of the population, but it could also be caused by strict requirements for immigrant groups from right-wing parties trying to prevent immigrants from getting the same rights as natives. This was not examined in this study," Gil-Clavel says.
"Among countries with strict integration requirements, our research shows that the more liberal immigrants' access to citizenship was, the faster they learned the language of the host country. This was found to be the case for France, the Netherlands and the UK, which are historically classified as liberal countries. Whether faster language acquisition is due to more liberal citizenship policies cannot be said one on one. It could also be explained by early integration requirements that immigrants have to fulfil, such as learning the language before moving to the country. If so, the result would have more to do with a selection effect than with citizenship policy. Further research should reveal this."
Need for continuing research
This is one of the first cross-border comparative analyses where immigrants in EU countries were followed for long periods of time to study their language acquisition. According to Gil-Clavel the research shows the need to continue building databases of representative long-term surveys to study the success of integration policies across the European Union. You can read the full article here.
