Usos lingüístics de l'alumnat d'origen estranger a l'educació primària de Catalunya

Abstract

Summary: The recovery and preservation of the Catalan language initiated during the 1970’s has been a long process that has been backed by the positive attitudes of the whole population towards this language. However, in the last 10 years, the demographic composition of Catalonia has changed substantially. The article presents two studies about the linguistic uses of migrant students in primary education. The first study analyses the linguistic uses of 625 12-year-old foreign students in 53 different schools, whereas the second study is an ethnographic research about the linguistic uses of foreign students carried out in a school where 90% of the students are migrants. The results show that, little by little and no matter if Catalan is the language of instruction or not, Spanish is the socially dominant language usually used by most foreign students. The only variables which modify this tendency are the presence of a high percentage of Catalan-speaking students in the classrooms and the use of Catalan in the students’ social environment. [Keywords: Immigration, linguistic uses, Catalan language, school education].