The impact of multilingualism on host language acquisition

Abstract

Purpose. Cultural, social and economic assimilation of immigrants in the destination country are essential for keeping a cohesive and stable society. This is particularly important in the present context, with Europe facing its biggest refugee crisis since World War II. This paper examines the determinants of a key factor of immigrant assimilation, host language acquisition, and puts the focus on an unexplored question: are multilingual immigrants better at learning destination language? Design/methodology/approach. The paper uses micro-data from the Spanish National Immigrant Survey (NIS), and adopts an Instrumental Variable (IV) approach. The number of foreign languages known by the immigrant is instrumented using unique information provided in the NIS: i) the immigrants parents nationalities and ii) the number of foreign countries where the individual has lived in prior to his arrival to Spain. These instruments pass well several validity tests. Findings. The IV estimates show that for every additional foreign language known the probability of being proficient in the destination language -Spanish- increases by 14.8%. This effect is equivalent to multiple years of formal education, to living for more than 6 years in Spain, and roughly as much as having a Romance mother language. Women reap larger benefits from multilingualism than men (18.1 against 12.6%). Originality/value. Evidence from other fields -linguistics- suggests that multilingualism plays an important role in the acquisition of additional foreign languages. However, the economics literature on immigrant assimilation and, more specifically, destination language learning has typically overlooked this channel. This paper is the first to fill this gap and to appraise the impact of multilingualism upon host language acquisition among immigrants.

Purpose. Cultural, social and economic assimilation of immigrants in the destination country are essential for keeping a cohesive and stable society. This is particularly important in the present context, with Europe facing its biggest refugee crisis since World War II. This paper examines the determinants of a key factor of immigrant assimilation, host language acquisition, and puts the focus on an unexplored question: are multilingual immigrants better at learning destination language? Design/methodology/approach. The paper uses micro-data from the Spanish National Immigrant Survey (NIS), and adopts an Instrumental Variable (IV) approach. The number of foreign languages known by the immigrant is instrumented using unique information provided in the NIS: i) the immigrants parents nationalities and ii) the number of foreign countries where the individual has lived in prior to his arrival to Spain. These instruments pass well several validity tests. Findings. The IV estimates show that for every additional foreign language known the probability of being proficient in the destination language -Spanish- increases by 14.8%. This effect is equivalent to multiple years of formal education, to living for more than 6 years in Spain, and roughly as much as having a Romance mother language. Women reap larger benefits from multilingualism than men (18.1 against 12.6%). Originality/value. Evidence from other fields -linguistics- suggests that multilingualism plays an important role in the acquisition of additional foreign languages. However, the economics literature on immigrant assimilation and, more specifically, destination language learning has typically overlooked this channel. This paper is the first to fill this gap and to appraise the impact of multilingualism upon host language acquisition among immigrants.