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Parental Linguistic Adjustment or Social Status: What is More Important for Sociolinguistic Adjustment in Migrant Children in Ireland?

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Global Perspectives on Well-Being in Immigrant Families

Part of the book series: Advances in Immigrant Family Research ((ADIMFAMRES,volume 1))

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Abstract

An ample number of studies have demonstrated the relationship between parental acculturation and children’s acculturation, the negative effect of the lack of parental cultural adjustment, and the discrepancy between parental and children’s acculturation on children’s sociolinguistic adjustment. Relatively little attention has been directed to the role of resources such as household social class or family income in psychological studies of migrant children. This lack of attention to family socioeconomic status (SES) might be surprising, given the rising recognition of the importance of environment on children’s development. There is sufficient empirical evidence that children’s development and psychological well-being are strongly related to the socioeconomic status of their parents. Migrant families often have lower socioeconomic status; thus, by implication, migrant children might be subjected to developmental disadvantage. This current study tries to address this gap in the acculturation literature by using a refined assessment of family socioeconomic status after migration along with measures of sociolinguistic adjustment of parents and children.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The median income of 60 % of the population has been considered to be at poverty level; those families whose income falls below this median income have been considered to be at risk of poverty.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the Growing up in Ireland team for making available the data and the documentation related to the GUI study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, University College Dublin, Newman Building, Belfield, Dublin, Ireland

    Ela Polek & Margaret Coen

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  1. Ela Polek
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  2. Margaret Coen
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Correspondence to Ela Polek .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Tilburg University, LE Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Radosveta Dimitrova

  2. Tilburg University, LE Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Michael Bender

  3. Tilburg University, LE Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Fons van de Vijver

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Polek, E., Coen, M. (2014). Parental Linguistic Adjustment or Social Status: What is More Important for Sociolinguistic Adjustment in Migrant Children in Ireland?. In: Dimitrova, R., Bender, M., van de Vijver, F. (eds) Global Perspectives on Well-Being in Immigrant Families. Advances in Immigrant Family Research, vol 1. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9129-3_10

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