Multilingualism and Migration

We study the processes related to linguistic and cultural diversity from a multidisciplinary perspective.

Research group information

Unit and faculty

Values, Ideologies and Social Contexts of Education
Faculty of Education and Psychology

Contact information

Research group leader

Research group description

In light of continuously increasing human migration and mobility in many parts of the world, linguistic and cultural diversity is growing exponentially across the planet. Many once monolingual societies have become multilingual and multicultural. Yet research on the complex processes and consequences accompanying these changes is scarce. We are a multidisciplinary, international group of scientists who collaborate to answer diverse questions about migration and multilingual development. Our work employs a variety of methodological approaches and toolkits, from evidence-based methods across different studies and large-scale datasets, to focused and creative ethnographic considerations of the everyday lives of language and mobility.

Selected recent publications

Bader, L., Ward, J., Fouts, H., & Jaekel, J. (2020). Infant care practices among resettled refugee mothers from East and Central Africa. Children, 7(63). https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9067/7/6/63

Elliot, A., Norum, R., & Salazar, N. (eds). 2017. Methodologies of Mobility: Ethnography and Experiment. Oxford: Berghahn.

Jaekel, N., Jaekel, J., Fincher, E., & Brown, C. L. (2022). Summer regression—the impact of summer on English learners’ reading development. Frontiers in Education, 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2022.817284

Jaekel, N., Jaekel, J., Willard, J., & Leyendecker, B. (2019). No evidence for effects of Turkish immigrant children‘s bilingualism on executive functions. PLOS ONE, 14(1), e0209981. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209981

Jaekel, N., Ritter, M., & Jaekel, J. (2022, preprint). Associations of linguistic distance to the language of instruction and classroom composition with English reading and listening skills. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.17636.86405

Jaekel, N., Schurig, M., van Ackern, I., & Ritter, M. (2022). The impact of early foreign language learning on language proficiency development from middle to high school. System. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2022.102763

Reig, A. & Norum, R. 2019. Migrantes. Barcelona: Ekaré.