Language biographies and multilingual language use: A sociolinguistic study of young refugees from Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan living in Germany

Abstract

This paper describes the individual experiences with migration-related multilingualism of young refugees from Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan living in Germany. Young refugees are a social group of particular linguistic interest because their late L2 learning takes place with limited family background and limited maintenance of heritage language and culture. These interview excerpts are connected to the current dissertation project titled “Sprachbiographien: Das Beispiel junger Geflüchteter aus Syrien, Iran und Afghanistan” (“Language Biographies: The example of young refugees from Syria, Iran and Afghanistan”). The nonrepresentative corpus of the study comprises 21 language biographical interviews with female and male refugees between 17 and 27 years. Specific guidelines were adhered to obtain insights into participants’ languages and cultural identities with a special focus on strategies of multilingual performances. The aim of this article is to show how young refugees’ language biographies are influenced by multilingual language use, based on selected samples from this survey.

Keywords

• refugees
• multilingualism
• language acquisition