Dr Pia Tenedero, Prof Ingrid Gogolin, and Ana Bruzon (ltr.) during the NGL network conference

“Do not ask for free drinking water in Germany!”

This was a travel tip I received from a friend who had recently returned to Manila from Europe. As a first-time traveler to this continent, I was easily impressed by lessons learned by those who had been there before. So, where and how to get enough water to drink was part of my anxiety coming to Hamburg to attend the Next Generation Literacies Network Conference on January 11 to 12, 2024.

Held at the University of Hamburg, the Next Generation Literacies Network Conference was attended by network members from the three partner institutions – Universität Hamburg, Macquarie University, and Fudan University, as well as scholars from other places.

Representing the University of Santo Tomas, Manila, I was one of three delegates from the Philippines. Aimee Joy Bautista (an offshore accountant who participated in my research about language practice and ideology in this work world of numbers) posted about her unique NGL conference experience here. I was also happy to meet another kababayan (co-national), Dan Henry Gonzales from Ateneo de Manila University, who spoke about practices of monolingual English bias in Laguna-based schools.

The nearly 100 attendees in the 2-day conference shared their research related to linguistic diversity, multilingualism, and multiliteracies in diverse settings across the continents of America, Asia, Australia, and Europe. The sharing of discoveries and dreams concluded with a reflection session starting with Ingrid Piller’s reflections about the legacies of Next Generation Literacies Network, which she accurately described as a network of networks.

“Loud” and “quiet” water

In my reflection as a network member, I told the story of how my views of research have evolved over the years since I joined Next Generation Literacies Network. Revisiting the metaphors I mentioned in my presentations during Next Generation Literacies Network events from 2021 to 2023, I recognized with gratitude how the Next Generation Literacies Network research seminars, the mentoring program, and the generously collaborative spirit of the members have helped me grow as an early career researcher.

I pondered on how my views of research have evolved from a journey and a game, to a resource and a voice, to open doors—images of access.

To conclude, I proposed a final metaphor for research—water.

Like the research we dedicate our lives to, water should be accessible.

Thankfully, this was my experience of water in Hamburg, despite my early worries about not having easy access to das Trinkwasser in Europe. Not only was I relieved to find that water was, in fact, abundantly available during the Conference, but I was also impressed to even have the option to have water that is leise (still) or laut (sparkling).

Amazed and happy to have my anxieties proved false and unnecessary, I was reminded in this life-giving conference that water, like research, can look and taste different depending on where I am, who I do it with, and what my purpose is. But, the purpose is always to serve life.

Professor Gogolin speaks at the International Symposium on Bilingualism

Why is linguistic diversity important in creating educational equity? How is the migrant experience different across different nations? How does the perception of national identity impact on migrant inclusion? How can research help us better understand and promote educational equity?

These are some of the questions I recently had the pleasure of discussing with Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Ingrid Gogolin from the Department of General, Intercultural and International Comparative Education at Hamburg University. Professor Gogolin is a long-time collaborator with Language on the Move editor Ingrid Piller, and together they head the global Next Generation Literacies network, along with professors Silvia Melo-Pfeifer (Hamburg University) and Yongyan Zheng (Fudan University).

Professor Gogolin was in Sydney to attend the International Symposium of Bilingualism. On the sidelines of a packed and engaging conference, I interviewed her about her globally renowned work in linguistic diversity in education. Over her distinguished career, she has been a passionate, powerful, and systematic advocate for recognizing and managing linguistic diversity in education in the school system.

I first asked Professor Gogolin to introduce her work to the Language on the Move audience and to explain why with all the educational inequalities in the world today, her focus was on linguistic diversity and educational inequality. Her answer will not surprise regular readers, who know about the various ways language matters in educational contexts around the world, from learning Mandarin as a second language to international students in Australian universities.

We then talked about the differences and similarities between Australia and Germany, where we both live and research, in terms of attitudes to migrants and migrant education. Professor Gogolin mentioned one of her articles which had a big influence on my own thinking about language in education (Ellis et al. 2010), and we talked about how much things have changed in Germany since it has become one of the world’s top migrant-receiving countries in the last few decades.

Finally, we talked about the all-important question of research impact. I asked how her research on linguistic diversity and education has been received by the general public and stakeholders, and how she feels about her contribution to teacher education and educating the general public about these issues. This is particularly important at a time when right-wing populism is on the rise around the world.

Reference

Ellis, Elizabeth, Ingrid Gogolin & Michael Clyne. 2010. The Janus face of monolingualism: A comparison of German and Australian language education policies. Current Issues in Language Planning 11(4). 439-460.

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Editor’s note: Learning from home is hard enough but what if you are simultaneously learning the language of instruction? In this latest contribution to our series of language aspects of the COVID-19 crisis, Elisabeth Barakos and Simone Plöger share how new arrival students in Hamburg, who are still learning German, their teachers, and the researchers themselves have adapted to the lock-down. The call for contributions to the series continues to be open.

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A preparatory class for newcomer students in Germany (Image credit: SZ)

Since 16^th March, schools in Germany have been closed and students need to learn from home. Learning from home is a huge challenge for many, especially recent arrivals. In Hamburg, newcomer students attend preparatory classes, where they learn German for about one year before being streamed into the monolingually oriented regular school system.

Like all other schooling, this preparatory German language learning is now supposed to take place from home. How are teachers, students, parents, and researchers adapting to these new circumstances?

Our research project – and how it has changed due to COVID-19

In January 2020 we started a research project to investigate the transitions from preparatory to mainstream classes in two secondary schools in Hamburg, with a particular focus on language learning. On the one hand, we focus on the language learning opportunities the schools implement for the students; on the other hand, we research students’ practices and experiences with a focus on how they can make use of the linguistic repertoires they bring to school.

When we started our project in January, we planned an exploration phase from March onward. The pandemic not only turned our participants’ lives upside down but also our field work plans at the school site. As our participants’ teaching and learning went virtual, so did we. We turned to methods from “virtual ethnography” (see e.g. Varis 2014) in order to get to know teachers and class contexts via emails, phone calls, and WhatsApp. This means that we use different communication spaces and digital ways in order to collect data. This way, our research continues, albeit virtually, as we adapt it to the new circumstances along with teachers, students, and parents. It also allows us to disseminate timely and novel findings on home schooling in preparatory classes during COVID-19.

Challenges of home learning faced by new arrival German language learners

Due to the school closures, the regular instruction in preparatory classes had to be changed to smartphone-based instruction. In one of our school sites, the German language teacher communicates mainly via frequent phone calls and chat groups on WhatsApp. The teacher differentiates the groups according to the students’ individual language level. Within the chats, she shares voice messages and uploads work sheets via link or photo. She also sends regular mail packages with additional learning material.

Unsurprisingly, this adaptation of teaching methods faces a number of challenges.

To begin with, the basic conditions for effective online communication are often lacking: for instance, students usually do not have their own email address; their access to computers at home is often non-existent or severely limited; mobile phones sometimes have to be shared with siblings; printing facilities are scarce and internet connections are often unreliable.

Second, communication and learning through WhatsApp-Chats and phone calls presents its own challenges. The smartphone screen is small and reading off a screen can be tiring. Furthermore, many students do not understand the task instructions as virtual explanations seem much more difficult to grasp than face-to-face ones. Teachers must therefore be highly creative when preparing lessons and adequate learning materials.

One teacher prepared this photo for students to practice prepositions

To exemplify: In order to practice prepositions and vocabulary about the topic of “home”, the teacher took photos of various objects and furniture from her own kitchen. She then sent the photos to the WhatsApp-Chat and asked each student a specific question about them (“Where is the book?” “Below the table.”).

In another example, the school used so-called cultural mediators who work as multilingual educators and support newcomer students and their families. In a phone conversation, one of them told us that she now worked as a “virtual interpreter”. When the father of a student collapsed, the family called her. She in turn called an ambulance and then translated between the medics and the family.

What the above examples demonstrate is the enormous administrative, creative and emotional labor that teachers and cultural mediators perform during this pandemic. They also show how much this type of labor and support depends on the individual person and their capabilities and investments.

Although our participants are extremely committed to their work, the examples also show the limits of distance learning: staying at home has significantly reduced students’ communication opportunities in German. Since a language is mainly learned through active communication and interaction with people, these limitations represent a great challenge for everyone involved.

The current situation demonstrates once again the importance for schools to integrate multilingual resources into their practices. As in many monolingual states, the linguistic diversity of the students is rarely taken into account in the German school system. Consequently, “one of the many lessons we need to learn from this crisis is to include the reality of linguistic diversity into our normal procedures and processes” (Piller 2020). This would mean paying specific attention to the students’ linguistic repertoires, looking for ways how to implement multilingualism in the classroom, and drawing on multilingual resources to provide information for parents and families.

Investing in preparatory classes as a space of social and multilingual learning

The work of cultural mediators as well as teachers shows that preparatory classes go well beyond language learning. Our research demonstrates that this type of class is also a social space where students meet schools in Germany for the first time. They probably meet their first friends within the new environment. In case of communication difficulties, they may resort to their classmates with whom they share their family language (which is much less common within regular classes). The preparatory class is therefore often some kind of “shelter” for the children – a place where they can arrive and find some calm and ease. In practice this also means that, in addition to verb derivation and vocabulary lists about springtime, topics such as residence permit or family reunification play an equally important role.

It is hence vital not to forget the preparatory classes and the newcomer students as Germany – and societies around the globe – discuss how to re-open schools. The teachers we speak to are worried that the preparatory classes could be disregarded. This fear is linked to previous experiences, which show that lessons in preparatory classes are the first to go whenever there is a shortage of teachers or a high level of absence due to illness. Furthermore, preparatory classes often lack reasonably equipped classrooms and digital resources. These shortcomings and the unequal distribution of resources are not new. The crisis has, however, exacerbated existing educational inequalities.

What, then, can we recommend based on our insights? For many students in preparatory classes, everyday school life signifies an important social and learning routine. In addition, they need active communication and interaction in order to continue learning German. That is why it is ever so important to include preparatory classes when gradually re-opening the schools.

References

Piller, I. 2020. “Covid-19 forces us to take linguistic diversity seriously”. A De Gruyter social sciences pamphlet: perspectives on the pandemic: international social science thought leaders reflect on Covid-19. Boomgaarden, G. (ed.). Berlin, Germany: De Gruyter.
Varis, P. K. 2014. “Digital ethnography.” Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies, Tilburg University.

Language challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic

Visit here for our full coverage of language aspects of the COVID-19 crisis.

Further reading

Richards, E. (2020, 2020-05-24). Coronavirus’ online school is hard enough. What if you’re still learning to speak English? USA Today.

Prof. Hans H. Reich (1939-2019)

The educator Professor Hans H. Reich, who pioneered education-and-migration-related research in Germany, passed away on the 19^th of February 2019. The obituary below was first published in German, and translated into English by Hanna Torsh.

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With Hans Reich’s passing we have lost an outstanding researcher, an irreplaceable mentor, the guiding light of migration and education research in Germany. We have also lost a friend.

Hans Reich was appointed as Professor of German language and literature in teacher education at the Pädagogische Hochschule Rheinland, Abteilung Neuss, in 1971. His research focus was on the pursuit of an equitable education system in the context of migration in Germany. Among his many achievements was the fact that he pioneered research into the teaching of migrant children. Together with Manfred Hohmann and Ursula Boos-Nünning he founded a research group which investigated, for the first time in Germany, the effect of teacher qualifications on the educational success of migrant children. At the same time, the group evaluated and developed intervention projects and significantly influenced education policy and practice. The research group remained in close contact after Hans Reich became Professor of German as a Second Language at the University of Koblenz-Landau in 1979.

Even after his retirement in 2005, Professor Hans Reich continued to be an active and inspirational contributor to research and education policy in an increasingly diverse society.

A key contribution was the initiation of the first international comparative study examining how European education systems were reacting to increasing numbers of migrant children in their midst. It is not only the conviction that we need to learn from each other that characterized his work but also the belief in the value of trust and cooperation among researchers. This conviction resulted in a large number of research groups which came about through his involvement. One example is the research program “Effects of labor migration on education and training” (“Folgen der Arbeitsmigration für Bildung und Erziehung”), which was supported by the German Research Council (DFG) with Hans Reich as the chief investigator (1991 to 1997). This program introduced a change in perspective in the research into migration, education and training which continues to shape research into this field today. It overcame the previous narrow focus on migrants in favor of a focus on the whole of society in which all members – albeit in different ways – are affected by the changing linguistic, cultural and social diversity in their social world.

Hans Reich also made an important contribution to the field of German as a foreign language. His starting point was not an interest in the dissemination of an abstract language but instead the process of acquisition, learning and use of languages. Central to this were the learning challenges faced by learners, the conditions under which their linguistic development takes place, and the pedagogical approaches this calls for. In this way he turned the focus on multilingualism, both as a basis for and as a goal of the learning process in second language education.

Another outstanding example of his contribution to the field is the model program “Supporting children and young people with a migrant background” (“Förderung von Kindern und Jugendlichen mit Migrationshintergrund – FörMig”) (2004 to 2009). Hans Reich was a member of the scientific committee of the program and we found him a meticulous researcher, inspiring collaborator, and wonderful mentor.

One result of our collective work were concepts such as that of integrated language learning (“durchgängige Sprachbildung”), which has significantly impacted educational practice and policy in Germany.

Hans Reich was an active listener as well as an active researcher and motivator; a conversation partner, who took on board diverse points of view, who carefully but critically asked questions, and who lent an ear even to those who might have been shy or slow to make their contributions.

Hans Reich knew that research is rooted in social responsibility. As a participant in discussions over education policy he always kept this in mind, whether in his role as a member of the advisory committee for migration (“Rat für Migration“), as a political advisor and in numerous initiatives in educational practice – from pre-schools to primary and secondary schools to higher education and training institutions – or as an advocate for teachers in difficult situations, above all teachers of heritage languages.

With the passing of Hans Reich we not only lose an outstanding researcher and educator, but also a connoisseur of good food and wine and an excellent conversationalist. He captivated his listeners, even if – or perhaps because – he could never bring himself to add PowerPoint presentations to his lectures.

He will be very much missed.

Hamburg, Berlin, Vienna, Landau, and Cologne, February 2019

Ingrid Gogolin, Ursula Neumann, Marianne Krüger-Potratz, Hans-Jürgen Krumm, Katharina Kuhs, Hans-Joachim Roth

Contact: nachrufhansreich@gmx.de

A list of Hans Reich’s publication is available here.

Goose Lizzy Fountain, Goettingen: in a city full of memorials to notable men, the most prominent memorial to a woman is to a generic peasant girl

March 08 is International Women’s Day. Therefore, we will explore gender aspects of academic excellence in a loose series throughout this month.

In January, I was invited to speak at the University of Göttingen. It was my first visit ever to this famous German university and the city that is built around it. For those who don’t know it, one way to think about Göttingen is as the German equivalent of Oxford or Cambridge.

Göttingen is steeped in academic excellence: the university boasts 45 Nobel Prize winners, and wandering through the city and looking at all the names on the commemorative plaques that indicate where a famous person lived or studied is nothing less than awe inspiring. Anyone who has ever used a Bunsen Burner, figured out a Gaussian Normal Distribution, or tried to understand Planck’s Constant has engaged with knowledge created in Göttingen.

Wandering through the city and being wowed by all the big names, it did not take me long to notice that all these names seemed to belong to men. In fact, the only memorial to a woman I saw on my (admittedly not very extensive) walk was not to a pioneering thinker but to a generic peasant girl, Goose Lizzy.

I only had a few hours in Göttingen; and so later I went to check out the Wikipedia list of famous members of the University of Göttingen. There are a breath-taking 637 notable academics on that list, starting with the founder of paleo-biology Othenio Abel and ending with the polymath Thomas Young. The latter, incidentally, was the first to propose an international phonetic alphabet, which he appended to his 1796 medical dissertation “so as not to leave these pages blank”.

Dorothea von Rodde-Schlözer is not on the list (Image Credit: Wikipedia)

So how many women are there among all these great thinkers, pioneering discoverers and trailblazing researchers? A paltry 23. An unbelievable 3.61 percent.

Can it be true that academic excellence in women is so rare?

The list includes current and former academics. So the lack of opportunity faced by women until the second half of the 20^th century might be one explanation. Indeed, 14 out of the 23 women on the list are still alive today. The first woman on the list (in terms of her birthday) is the mathematician Emmy Noether, who was born in 1882.

In Germany, women gained the formal right to study at university only in 1908 although various exceptions had been made before then. If women couldn’t go to university, they obviously had no opportunity to demonstrate academic excellence.

Sofja Kowalewskaja is not on the list (Image Credit: Wikipedia)

That’s not the full explanation, though, as the case of Dorothea von Rodde-Schlözer shows. Dorothea von Rodde-Schlözer is NOT on the Wikipedia list of notable members of the University of Göttingen. And yet, Dorothea von Rodde-Schlözer was the second woman ever to be awarded a PhD at a German university – Göttingen, in fact – in 1787.

The daughter of Professor August Ludwig von Schlözer – whose name is on the list – her education was the result of a bet her father had waged that women’s brains could be equal to men’s if properly trained. She therefore had the best private tutors and learned to speak ten languages (in addition to German, these were Dutch, English, French, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Latin, Spanish, and Swedish). By age 17, Professor Schlözer considered his daughter ready for university. Dorothea was not allowed to enroll, however. To humor her influential father, she was permitted to undertake a private examination at the conclusion of which the PhD was awarded.

This concluded the experiment – the bet was presumably won – and Dorothea was duly married off. Father and daughter went on to co-author a book about the Russian economy. Incidentally, Dorothea von Rodde-Schlözer also became the first German woman to take a double name including both her husband’s and father’s names.

Surely, Dorothea von Rodde-Schlözer’s achievements merit her inclusion in the list. Why is she not there? Because of the technicality that she was not enrolled?

Charlotte von Siebold is not on the list (Image Credit: Wikipedia)

Well, Charlotte von Siebold, who was enrolled as an auditor and who is commonly regarded as the first modern German female gynecologist, is not there, either. The same is true of another three trailblazing academic women, who all received their PhDs in Göttingen: the mathematician Sofja Kowalewskaja (1874), the chemist Julia Lermontowa (1874) and the physicist Margaret Maltby (1895).

That I can identify five notable academic women affiliated with the University of Göttingen who have not made it onto the Wikipedia list of notable members more or less off the top of my head puts the outrageously low number of women on the list in a somewhat different light: their absence is not only the result of the historical exclusion of women but of contemporary ignorance.

Margaret Maltby is not on the list (Image Credit: Wikipedia)

The fact that women are less likely to be considered notable, even today, was strikingly illustrated last year when Donna Strickland won the 2018 Physics Nobel Prize. At the time of the award, Donna Strickland did not have a Wikipedia page. Someone had attempted to build a Wikipedia page for her in May 2018 (about half a year before the award) but the submission had been rejected by a Wikipedia moderator on the grounds that “this submission’s references do not show that the subject qualifies for a Wikipedia article.” The male joint winner, Gérard Mourou, had had a Wikipedia entry since 2005 …

That there have been more notable men than women throughout history is the result of centuries of patriarchal domination. That we do not know about the achievements of many female thinkers, researchers and scientists is the result of the ongoing dismissal of women’s contributions. Even today, female achievement is ignored and judged by different standards. The latter in turn cements the perception that academic excellence is a male prerogative.

Julia Lermontova is not on the list (Image Credit: Wikipedia)

If you’d like to make a difference this International Women’s Day, why not get onto Wikipedia and add Dorothea von Rodde-Schlözer, Charlotte von Siebold, Sofja Kowalewskaja, Julia Lermontowa and Margaret Maltby to the list of notable members of the University of Göttingen? Or curate the page of a notable yet overlooked woman?

Related content

• Why do female academics publish less than their male peers?
• Strange Academic women

Further reading

Bazely, D. 2018. Why Nobel winner Donna Strickland didn’t have a Wikipedia page. Washington Post

Cecco, L. 2018. Female Nobel prize winner deemed not important enough for Wikipedia entry. Guardian

Professor Peter Siemund, Hamburg University, during his guest lecture at Macquarie University

It is easy to assume that bilinguals are better at adding another language to their repertoire. But is that always true?

Evidence from English language learning in multilingual classrooms in Europe

School children in European countries such as Germany all study English as a foreign language as part of their education. Most of these school children will be monolingual in German but an increasing number speaks a language other than German at home. How do these students’ monolingual repertoires in German or bilingual repertoires in German and another language affect their learning of English?

This is the question explored by Professor Peter Siemund from Hamburg University in his lecture in the Lectures in Linguistic Diversity series at Macquarie University.

Professor Siemund started out by identifying a paradox of multilingualism research: multilingualism is often thought to be an advantage for both cognitive development and learning, but, at the same time, cross-linguistic influence research shows that speaking more languages often leads to more negative interference in the learning of subsequent languages.

For instance, he cited research (Lorenz, 2018) that found that Turkish and Russian monolingual learners of English were able to get the meaning of the English progressive aspect right 100% of the time. In contrast, German-Turkish and German-Russian bilinguals only got it right about as frequently as monolingual German speakers. It seems obvious that transfer from German, which has no progressive aspect, negatively affected the English language learning of these bilinguals. So in this case, bilingualism did not help but hinder when it came to this particular grammatical feature of English language learning.

Different languages, different findings

In another study described by Professor Siemund the relationship between reading comprehension scores in German and another language on the one hand and test scores in English on the other were examined. It was found that German comprehension skills correlated with English test performance for German-Russian bilinguals but not for German-Turkish bilinguals. This highlights the fact that bilingualism is not a unitary phenomenon and is different depending on which languages are involved.

The trade-off between linguistic accuracy and fluency (Source: Peter Siemund)

Accuracy versus flexibility

It is not only bilingualism that is not a unitary phenomenon but the same is true of language learning. What do we mean when we say that someone is a good language learner?

One relevant dimension is linguistic accuracy; another is linguistic fluency. In my own experience as a language learner and teacher, learners who are more accurate are often less fluent, while those who are more fluent often sacrifice accuracy.

This was also the conclusion reached by Professor Siemund, who argued that there is a trade-off between accuracy and flexibility. While monolinguals might be more accurate, plurilinguals might be more flexible. He closed by suggesting that bi-and trilingualism might be equilibrious points where accuracy and flexibility are most likely to be in balance.

What do these findings mean for advocacy?

For those of us who are interested in advocating for the rights of migrant language speakers, it can be tricky to talk about the disadvantages of being bilingual or multilingual. It is a balancing act between supporting linguistic diversity and fighting against the discrimination experienced by speakers of minority languages. Supporting linguistic diversity in the abstract sometimes overshadows the fact that some kinds of bi/multilingualism are clearly more equal than others. In fact we already know that being multilingual can be disadvantageous in education and at work, whether it’s for minority language-speaking children who are unable to access education in their first language and standardised tests which discriminate against them or migrants whose linguistic repertoires are problematized in the workplace.

Maybe we need to reframe the question: instead of asking what the advantages or disadvantages of bi- and multilingualism might be, we should ask how we can help ensure equality of opportunity regardless of linguistic repertoire, as Ingrid Piller does in her recent book Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice.

References

Lorenz, E. (2018). “One day a father and his son going fishing on the Lake”: A study on the use of the progressive aspect of monolingual and bilingual learners of English. In Bonnet, A. and P. Siemund (eds.) Foreign Languages in Multilingual Classrooms (pp. 331–357). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Piller, I. (2016). Linguistic diversity and social justice: an introduction to applied sociolinguistics. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

The 2018 Anneliese Maier Research Award Recipients (Image: Humboldt-Stiftung/Jens Jeske)

The awards ceremony and research symposium for the Anneliese Maier Research Awards took place in Berlin from September 11 to 13, 2018. I was honoured to attend as one of eight international researchers to receive this year’s Anneliese Maier Research Award.

The Anneliese Maier Research Award is a life-time achievement award that is presented by the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation to leading researchers in the humanities and social sciences. Funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the award seeks to help promote the internationalisation of the humanities and social sciences in Germany.

Each Anneliese Maier Research Award is valued at €250,000 and is granted to outstanding humanities scholars and social scientists from outside Germany who are nominated by collaborative partners at German universities and research institutions. The award is designed to finance research collaboration over a period of up to five years with colleagues in Germany.

This year’s eight award winners were selected from a total of 111 nominees from 30 countries. At the research symposium accompanying the award ceremony proper, each awardee presented their research. It was inspiring to learn about truly pioneering research grappling with universal questions of the human condition as well as fundamental social challenges of our time.

Is there a connection between the Global Financial Crisis and domestic violence?

Yes, says Professor Sylvia Walby (Lancaster University; Universität Duisburg-Essen), who explored the gender dimensions of the Global Financial Crisis of 2007 and showed how the crisis has cascaded into all realms of social life. Women have been particularly affected by the crisis, as is, inter alia, evidenced by rising rates of domestic violence in the UK.

The 2018 Anneliese Maier Research Award Winners and their sponsors and academic hosts (Image: Humboldt-Stiftung/Jens Jeske)

Does everyone’s vote count equally in a liberal democracy?

No, says Professor José Maurício Domingues (Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro; Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung; Freie Universität Berlin), who examined theories of modernity and showed that there is an oligarchical element at the heart of all liberal democracies.

Are more and more migrants too lazy to learn the language of their host society?

No, says Professor Ingrid Piller (Macquarie University; Universität Hamburg). In my own presentation I interrogated the meaning of migrant linguistic integration. While language learning is increasingly constructed as a relatively banal matter of individual responsibility, it is in reality a highly complex process that is accomplished in interaction.

Should you always trust your own senses?

No, says Professor Pascal Mamassian (École Normale Supérieure de Paris; Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen), who researches visual perception. In his talk he explored problems of meta-cognition: How good are we at evaluating our own cognition? How good are we at estimating the validity of our own interpretations? In a series of striking experiments he showed that we are certainly not as good as most of us like to think.

Is gossip helpful in moral decision making?

Yes, says Professor Douglas Cairns (University of Edinburgh; Technische Universität Dresden). This counterintuitive finding comes from his analyses of Ancient Greek tragedies, where imagined dialogues with and about other people function as a form of distributed cognition. Basically, gossiping about other people can serve as a scaffold to explore our own emotions and thoughts.

Did Iceland alter the course of the history of the Ottoman Empire?

Yes, says Professor Alan Mikhail (Yale University; Otto-Friedrich Universität Bamberg). Unlikely as it may seem, tiny little Iceland fundamentally altered the course of the history of the Ottoman Empire in the 18^th century. This was despite the fact that it was not part of the Ottoman Empire, had no political relations with the Ottoman Empire and, in fact, few if any Ottomans knew that Iceland even existed. The explanation for this conundrum stems from the eruption of Iceland’s Laki volcano in 1783, which resulted in a climate catastrophe. Volcanic activity in faraway Iceland disrupted the Indian Ocean monsoon and as a result the Nile did not flood for a few years. The consequence of that was extremely poor harvests and hence a severe food shortage. The latter led to social unrest in Egypt and the progressive collapse of Ottoman political power.

Does it make a difference whether historical periodization is by dynasty or by century?

Yes, says Professor Wang Hui (Tsinghua University; Georg-August-Universität Göttingen), who examined the reorganization of Chinese history in the 20^th century from an indigenous periodization (by dynasty) to the globally uniform periodization by century. The 20^th century is thus not only momentous in Chinese history for the usual reasons (revolution, occupation, founding of the PRC, etc.) but also because Chinese history became globally synchronized.

Left to right: Enno Aufderheide (Secretary General, Humboldt Foundation); Jan Louis (Vice-President, Hamburg University); Ingrid Gogolin; Ingrid Piller; Thomas Rachel (State Secretary, Ministry of Education and Research) (Image: Humboldt-Stiftung/Jens Jeske)

Can you just bag a gift and walk away?

No, says Professor Annelise Riles (Northwestern University; Max-Planck-Institut für ethnologische Forschung Halle). The lawyer and anthropologist used Marcel Mauss‘ famous book The Gift to probe the future of the university in our inward-looking times. Gifts are a sign of trust. Therefore, they place the recipient under an obligation to live up to that trust: not only to reciprocate but also to pay it forward.

What’s next?

It was a truly inspiring experience to be able to spend three days in the company of such remarkable people: in addition to the awardees, their academic hosts, Humboldt Fellows from around the world and representatives of the Humboldt Foundation were in attendance.

It is particularly gratifying that the funding from the Anneliese Maier Research Award will allow my sponsors, Professors Ingrid Gogolin and Drorit Lengyel from Hamburg University, and myself to act on that inspiration. The award will enable us to conduct comparative research into the language learning experiences of newly arrived migrants in Australia and Germany. In a first step we will soon be advertising a bespoke PhD scholarship for a candidate to pursue a joint PhD under our supervision at both Hamburg and Macquarie universities. Watch this space!

Related content

• Ingrid Piller receives 2018 Anneliese Maier Research Award

Students at the German-Chinese College, ca. 1910 (Source: German Federal Archives)

The dichotomy of East and West is a recent phenomenon and associated with European industrialization. Yet, it is difficult to escape this dichotomy in contemporary thought, where orientalism continues to inform debates inside and outside the academy. The increasing construction of an opposition between East and West – rather than a view of Eurasia as a complex whole – can be dated back to the 19^th century, as social anthropologist Chris Hann explains in this 12-minute lecture.

Even when the divergence between East and West materialized in colonial contexts, it was by no means straightforward and clear-cut. Instead, the discursive construction of East and West was polyvocal and dialogical. A good example of these shifting discourses can be found in the fluctuation in European views of China. Since the Middle Ages, European views of China veered between Sinophilia and Sinophobia, as the historian George Steinmetz explains in his study of German colonialism, The Devil’s Handwriting, a summary of which is available here on Language on the Move.

In the 16^th and 17^th century China emerged as a highly positive model in European discourse. The Jesuits, who were the first Europeans to spend extended periods there and to seriously engage with China, described China as a stable state governed by learned men, the mandarins, in the manner of Platonists. They found a lot to admire in China: the practical philosophy of Confucianism as well as Chinese politeness, medicine and language. During that period, the Chinese were rarely regarded in racial terms. If they were, they were usually considered white. In short, Chinese civilization was viewed as equal to European civilization and in some respects, even as superior.

With increasing European colonial expansion, this changed from the late 18^th century onwards and another – negative – discourse began to emerge. The rise of Sinophobia was an “intradiscursive response to Sinophilia” (Steinmetz, 2008, p. 388). In this discourse, the traditional stability of the Chinese state came to be seen as stagnant, despotic and the sign of a decaying nation. The learnedness and politeness of mandarins became a time-wasting pretension. The Chinese state exam for the selection of mandarins was no longer seen as a meritorious system but was now perceived as breeding imitation and copying. Confucianism was demoted from admired philosophy to false religion. And, last but not least, the Chinese became racialized as “the yellow race”, which was considered semi-barbarian and half-civilized.

Opening ceremony of the German-Chinese College, Qingdao, 1909 (Source: German Federal Archives)

These opposing discourses and the polyvocality inherent in interweaving discourses shaped a distinct native policy in the German colony of Qingdao. For a general overview of the colony, see Ingrid Piller’s summary of The Devil’s Handwriting.

The forces of Sinophobia were resounding at the dawn of colonization and during the first periods of segregationist German native policy in Qingdao (1897-1904). However, the precolonial discourse of Sinophilia had never fully retreated from the scene and it resurfaced again after 1905 in German Qingdao. Against this resurgence, German-Chinese cultural exchange emerged in the second phase of the colony (1905-1914), which can best be described as “an open-ended joint cultural program” (Steinmetz, 2008, p. 487). A key expression of this joint cultural program was the German Chinese College.

It was one of the stated goals of the German Chinese College to share the best of the two cultures.

At the school’s opening ceremony in 1909, speakers from both sides endorsed the idea of combining the best of their two cultures. A toast was raised to the Chinese emperor, the “national anthem” of the Qing Empire was sung, and the school’s German director proclaimed that “all of the cultural peoples [Kulturvölker] are linked by a common bond” and should “share their discoveries.” Here the Chinese were unambiguously (re)inscribed into the dominant pole of the German racial-anthropological binary. The imperial German and late Qing dynasty flags flew side by side in front of one of the school’s provisional buildings. (Steinmetz, 2008, pp. 486f.)

The German colony has left its traces in photos displayed on the wall of a Qingdao backpacker hotel (Photo: Gegentuul Baioud, 2012)

One of the men who pushed forward this cultural syncretism was Richard Wilhelm (1873-1930). Wilhelm was a colonial officer who lived in China for 25 years and became a renowned Sinologist in Germany after World War I. His cultural hybridity was admired by many and Carl Jung lauded him as a “mind which created a bridge between East and West and gave to the Occident the precious heritage of a culture thousands of years old” (quoted in Steinmetz, 2008, p. 505).

In sum, European representations of the Chinese were highly polyvocal and linked to different forms of cultural syntheses.

This raises an important question for our conceptualization of Orientalism. Can a universal concept of Orientalism explain the diverse representation of non-Europeans by Europeans and the subsequent multiple forms of cultural engagement ranging from clashes to cooperation? To put it differently, is there one orientalism or are there many orientalisms? To reflect on the multiplicity of the discursive space that has put East and West in opposition is crucial for mutual understanding and transcending this artificial binary.

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Ethnography as the “devil’s handwriting”

The Devil’s Handwriting takes its title from the memoir of Paul Rohrbach (1869-1956), a German travel writer and colonial official. The memoir, published in 1953, when the Third Reich provided an ineluctable prism on the German colonial empire (1884-1918), advances the idea of a satanic mode of writing: travel writing such as that produced by the young Rohrbach about Africa and China had laid the basis for the evil of colonialism. Steinmetz makes this idea the central hypothesis of his fascinating inquiry and finds a close relationship between ethnographic representations and colonial policies. This may seem unsurprising and harks back to Edward Said’s dictum “from travelers’ tales […] colonies were created” (Orientalism, p. 117).

What is surprising is the many different forms of colonial policy and practice that The Devil’s Handwriting reveals. Even in the relatively short-lived and comparatively small German colonial empire, colonial governance was highly variable. That variation cannot be explained by socioeconomic or materialist theories, as Steinmetz shows with reference to three specific colonies: Southwest Africa (present-day Namibia), Samoa and Qingdao (in Shandong province). Each of these held a distinct and very different place in the European imagination prior to colonization.

Abject and devious savages

Ovaherero in chains, 1904 (Source: Der Spiegel)

Precolonial accounts of the people of Southwest Africa were extremely negative and represented them as sub-human savages. One 19^th century German explorer, for instance, described the Khoikhoi as “bizarre red people” of “pronounced ugliness” with an “animal-like clicking language” (p. 154). The Germans did not invent these tropes of African abject savagery but fell back on the accounts of earlier European travelers. Already in 1612, for instance, a British official had described the Khoikhoi as “brute and savage, without religion, without language, without laws or government, without manners or humanity, and last of all without apparel” (p. 81; spelling adapted to modern English).

By the time the German colonial state arrived in Southwest Africa in the late 19^th century, these negative representations of Africans as abject savages had become entrenched in the minds of Europeans. Additionally, these previous encounters added another dimension, namely that of deviousness, shiftiness and insincere cunning. The Cape Colony, which had been under European (first Dutch, then British) rule since the late 17^th century, had brought numerous Europeans – traders, settlers, explorers, soldiers and missionaries – to Southern Africa. 19^th century German arrivals felt that contact with these earlier Europeans had served to corrupt the locals even further. One travel writer opined that “contact with civilization seems to make the savage more savage” (p. 156).

The military leadership of Southwest Africa, 1905 (Source: Der Spiegel)

In this perverted logic, conversion to Christianity was seen to make the natives “worse” rather than “better”. One missionary, for instance, wrote in a letter: “According to many whites it is much easier to interact with a pagan who has had no contact, or very little, with the mission than with the baptized ones. […] In many cases this is sadly often true” (p. 121, fn. 195)

These entrenched negative perceptions of Africans – as abject savages who had been further degraded through contact with Europeans – largely precluded any kind of engagement with them, as is particularly obvious from the fact that Europeans rarely attempted to learn local languages. In fact, many considered African languages unlearnable. The Khoikhoi language was variously described as similar to the “clucking of turkeys”, the “screaming of cocks” or to the sound of farting. This “apishly [rather] than articulately sounded” “incomprehensible” language kept frustrating Europeans:

But while Europeans expressed frustration at being unable to learn the local tongue, Khoikhoi picked up English or Dutch very quickly. Europeans seemed incapable of reaching the obvious conclusion that the locals had more linguistic talent than their foreign visitors. (p. 82)

The Europeans’ staunch belief in their own superiority meant that they wanted to transform Africans. Their assumption that communication and meaningful interaction were difficult, if not impossible, meant that they considered force and violence the preferred mode of engagement. Consequently, colonial policy aimed to seize the land and livestock of local populations in order to turn them into a “deracinated, atomized proletariat” (p. 203). Where locals resisted, extreme violence was readily used, as in the 1904 “Annihilation Order”, which ushered in the 20^th century’s first genocide, of the Ovaherero.

2014 exhibition of (pre)colonial South Pacific photos at the Hamburg Museum of Anthropology entitled “A view of paradise”

Noble savages

In hindsight, the Ovaherero Genocide is often read as a precursor to the Holocaust and an indicator that German colonialism was exceptionally brutal and destructive. Steinmetz, however, contends that this argument suffers from a methodological error, namely the lack of comparison with other national cases. It is not his aim to compare German colonialism with the colonialism of other European nations although he does point out in passing similarities of the Ovaherero Genocide with the extermination of Tasmanian Aborigines and the Queensland Frontier Wars between 1840 and 1897. Steinmetz advances the comparative case “intranationally” with reference to two other German colonies, Samoa and Qingdao. Although these were part of the German colonial empire at the same time as Southwest Africa, colonialism played out quite differently there.

European ideas about Samoa, as of the South Pacific generally, were rather different to those they had of African. Like Africans, Samoans were portrayed as inferior savages. However, in contrast to Africans, Samoans were considered beautiful, noble and virtuous and were thought to live in paradise in harmony with nature.

German enthrallment with Samoans coupled with their belief in racial hierarchies produced some absurd ideological maneuvers. For instance, when German settlers in 1934 (by which time Samoa was a colony of New Zealand) formed a chapter of the Nazi party, they duly made a case that Samoas were “Aryans”. Crazy as that may seem, Samoans were not the only ones whose “race” kept changing in European eyes:

One of the most absurd aspects of European discussions of “race” during the nineteenth century is the way in which certain populations “changed color” as their relative standing within comparative ethnographic discourse shifted. Thus, the Witbooi changed from black to yellow after 1894 […] and the Chinese changed from white to yellow over the course of the nineteenth century. Samoans underwent a process of racial lightening, becoming more like the early image of Tahitians – who themselves began to seem swarthier to Europeans as they lost their charm.” (p. 302)

“Looking into paradise” was not innocent: “scientific” photography in physical anthropology, Samoa, ca. 1875 (held in the collection of the Hamburg Anthropology Museum)

In short, by the late 19^th century, Samoa had become paradise in the European imagination. Therefore, the aim of colonial policy was not to change Samoans but – to the contrary – to keep them in their supposed paradisiacal state. To achieve that the use of explicit force was rarely considered and the idea was that the colonial state would offer a firm paternal hand. In contrast to Southwest Africa, where the possibility of learning local languages did not seem to enter the minds of Europeans, it did in Samoa. The colony was governed through the medium of Samoan and, to a lesser degree, English. Colonial officials periodically responded to reprimands from Berlin and pointed out that the use of German in the South Pacific was not practical. The two German colonial governors (Samoa was a German colony for only 14 years) both became proficient Samoan speakers, adopted Samoan titles and styled themselves as traditional Samoan chiefs. Their identification with the colony was such that one of them declared himself to be Polynesian when he was no longer in office.

An advanced civilization

Just to be clear, it is not Steinmetz’ intention to argue that Samoan colonialism was “good”. All colonialism involves subjugation and exploitation, and Samoa was no exception. In fact, he trains his eye not on the colonized but the colonizers and his argument revolves around one of the perennial problems of intercultural communication: the ways in which stereotypes inform action. While European stereotypes about Africans and Samoans were relatively consistent, this was not the case with China.

China had been known to Europeans since the Middle Ages and hence there was significant variability in the ways it was represented in ethnographic writing. From early vague views of a fabled land emerged a highly positive representation starting with the 16^th century Jesuits of China as a well-ordered advanced society that was superior to Europe. These discourses of Sinophilia were in the 19^th century complemented with yet another, now negative, strand of representations of Chinese as members of an inferior race. While negative views started to gain currency, the earlier positive representations never died out entirely and so discourses about China were always much more poly-vocal than was the case with Africa and the South Pacific.

The transformation of Sinophilia into Sinophobia was, of course, tied to colonial expansion at the time and another emerging idea was “that China was ‘crying aloud for foreign conquest’” (p. 389). The Germans particularly coveted a colonial port similar to what the British had with Hong Kong and so they annexed Qingdao on the east coast in 1897. The first couple of years of colonial rule saw a focus on aggressive segregation between the colonizers and the colonized. However, this hostile approach did not last long, not least because colonial officials from the military were increasingly replaced with administrators who had a background in Chinese studies or had previously worked as translators and interpreters.

Many of the Qingdao colonial officials were graduates of the Oriental Languages Department at the University of Berlin, a language-training institute with the mission to prepare graduates for the foreign service. Graduates achieved high levels of proficiency in Chinese and imbibed a spirit of Sinophilia. Putting these men in charge of colonial policy resulted in “a program of rapprochement, syncretism, and exchange between two civilizations conceptualized as different but relatively equal in value” (p. 470).

Another legacy of German colonialism: Tsingtao Beer. The brewery, which was founded in 1903, is today a major tourist attraction (Source: Wikipedia)

A bilingual high school and college were founded with the aim to orient Chinese elites towards Germany. The high school employed Chinese teachers to teach Chinese, math, physics and chemistry, and German teachers to teach German and history. In contrast to colonial schools elsewhere, there was no religious instruction and Christian holidays were not observed. The college similarly aimed at an equilibrium between German and Chinese elements and offered a mixed curriculum. Institutions such as these and the colonial policies they were based on “took for granted that China was an advanced civilization on a level equal to that of Europe. Opening these floodgates within a colonial context pointed beyond European claims to sovereignty and supremacy, beyond colonialism” (p. 534).

Beyond colonialism?

German colonialism ended with Germany’s defeat in World War I and its unconditional surrender. This did not mean independence for its colonies but a change in occupying power. Southwest Africa was assigned to South Africa, Samoa to New Zealand and Qingdao came under Japanese occupation.

The afterlife of German colonialism is highly variable, too. Discussions with Namibia over reparations and a formal apology are ongoing although, as Steinmetz points out, the economic structures created by colonialism remain in place, with 30% of all Namibian farms owned by Germans or their descendants. In Samoa, German colonialism seems largely forgotten or, at least, not a matter of public debate; and Qingdao is capitalizing on its German heritage by having it turned into a tourist attraction.

Overall, The Devil’s Handwriting is a brilliant historical study of a key question in intercultural communication: how are discourses of culture related to practices in intercultural engagement? My brief overview here cannot do justice to the wealth of detail it offers but anyone interested in history, colonialism and intercultural communication will enjoy this book. Another highly recommended!

Happy reading! And don’t forget to share your progress. If you tweet about it and mention @lg_on_the_move, you’ll be in the running for our monthly draw of a copy of Intercultural Communication. The March winner has been announced on Twitter:

Each month we celebrate the #Language-on-the-Move community by gifting a copy of Ingrid Piller's "Intercultural Communication" @EdinburghUP to one of our interactive followers. The March winner is @KhawlaBadwan. Who will get lucky in April? pic.twitter.com/0liU8J2EyD

— Language on the Move (@Lg_on_the_Move) April 1, 2018

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You probably don’t need to know much about ethnic discrimination in the labor market or German society to guess the order of employer preference correctly.

In a year-long field experiment a total of 1,474 identical application letters that only varied in name and photo were sent in response to job ads for admin assistants. “Sandra Bauer” was invited for interview in response to 18.8% of her applications. For “Meryem Öztürk” (without headscarf) that figure was 13.5% and for “Meryem Öztürk” (with headscarf) such positive feedback was as low as 4.2%.

These results are neither new nor surprising: that ethnic names serve as signals of ethnic identity and may attract discrimination in the job market if the ethnicity in question is negatively stereotyped has been demonstrated in similar field experiments in a range of national and historical contexts and for a variety of ethnic names (for an overview, see Chapter 4 of Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice).

What the study by Doris Weichselbaumer does show is that adding an additional stigma – the headscarf as a signal of Muslim identity in this case – results in stronger discrimination and further disadvantages the bearer. So, stigmatized identities obviously intersect to create multiple and complex barriers; but how can these barriers be lifted?

In the field experiment, “Meryem Öztürk” (with headscarf) received the highest call-back rate from employers whose job ad had explicitly stated that they were an intercultural team or that the company valued diversity. The effect was statistically very small but still seems to suggest that experience with ethnic diversity helps to reduce barriers. This is similar to the experience of women in the workplace: while the barriers for the first women to seeking paid employment, to entering a particular industry, or gaining work at a particular level or to being accepted in a particular workplace are high, they are lowered for other women who follow in their steps.

In order to succeed and overcome gender discrimination, pioneering women in the workplace (be it in paid employment generally, in a particular industry, at a particular level or in a particular company) have had to be “better” – more qualified, more experienced, more talented, more connected – than their male counterparts. In fact, that this has not changed even today is most clearly evident from the current US presidential election where a highly qualified, experienced and accomplished female politician competes against a male candidate who has neither relevant qualifications nor experience.

Even in 2016, women’s equality in the workplace has not been achieved anywhere in the world – one indicator is the persistent gender pay gap, which stands at 15.46% on the OECD average. Nevertheless, women have made their way into the workforce and have overcome incredible obstacles to do so in little over a century. For many individual women, overcoming gender discrimination as an entry barrier has meant that they had to be better qualified and more experienced than their male competitors in order to get a chance.

Does this “strategy” also work with ethnic discrimination? Does being better qualified and having more experience mean that an applicant with a stigmatized ethnic name receives a positive response as often as a less-qualified applicant with a “native” name?

Another recent field experiment study in Sweden was designed to find out exactly that. The researchers, Mahmood Arai, Moa Bursell, and Lena Nekby, also used the CVs and application letters of fictitious applicants to respond to job ads for computer specialists, drivers, accountants, high school teachers, and assistant nurses. In the first stage of the experiment, they compared call-back rates for fictitious applicants with an Arabic and a Swedish name – with the same result as the German-Turkish study above (and many, many others): “Fatima Ahmed” and “Abdallah Hossein” were invited for interview significantly less than “Karolina Svensson” and “Jonas Söderström.”

In a second stage of the experiment, the researchers then systematically enhanced the profile of the applicant with the Arabic name so that he or she was more qualified than their counterpart with the Swedish name.

What do you guess happened? Are you betting on employer rationality where the merits of an individual overcome the negative group stereotype or are you a cynic who thinks that bigotry is relatively immune to factual evidence?

Well, neither view would be quite right – as always, the results turned out to be more complex: enhanced qualifications did nothing for male applicants with an Arabic name and their Swedish-named counterparts still had better call-back rates despite being now less qualified. For drivers, a “male” job with the highest callback rates for all applicants, higher qualifications actually reduced an applicant’s chances of being invited for interview. For female applicants, however, their enhanced qualifications “cancelled” the stigma of having an Arabic name: in the second scenario they were invited for interview as often as their (now less-qualified) counterparts with a Swedish name.

How can these conflicting results be explained? The researchers posit that cultural stereotypes are typically associated with the men of a group and are stronger for men. In other words, negative stereotypes about Middle Eastern men are so strong that superior individual merit does not help to overcome the stigma signaled by an Arabic-sounding name. By contrast, cultural stereotypes associated with women are generally weaker because they are not seen as default representatives of the group in the way men are. Furthermore, cultural stereotypes associated with women are often quite different from the stereotype of men of the same group. Therefore, superior individual merit may be cancelling out the group stigma in the case of female applicants with an Arabic name.

In many countries, there are significant gaps in the employment outcomes of migrants and the native-born. The two studies reviewed here both provide evidence that, at least with regard to Muslims, this difference is partly a result of discrimination at the entry stage. The Swedish study also shows that cultural stereotypes affect men and women differently. As a method, field experiments deliver telling results but the intersections between gender, ethnicity and occupation uncovered by Arai, Bursell and Nekby also remind us of the importance of ethnographic research in workplace contexts to understand how the “native” vs. “migrant” divide continues to be produced and reproduced.

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References

Arai, M., Bursell, M., & Nekby, L. (2016). The Reverse Gender Gap in Ethnic Discrimination: Employer Stereotypes of Men and Women with Arabic Names International Migration Review, 50 (2), 385-412 DOI: 10.1111/imre.12170

Piller, I. (2016). Language at work Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199937240.003.0004

Weichselbaumer, D. (2016). Discrimination against Female Migrants Wearing Headscarves. Bonn: IZA.

Asylum seekers practicing German (Source: Schwaebische.de)

Germany has discovered a new social type that is causing grief in modern diverse societies: the “Integrationsverweigerer;” literally someone who refuses to integrate, a “Verweigerer” is a “conscientious objector” or a “refusenik.” The principal characteristic of a “Integrationsverweigerer” is that they are not learning German and the German government is now planning to get tough on the type: the country’s main tabloid headlined a few days ago: “Wer nicht Deutsch lernt, fliegt raus!” (“If you don’t learn German, you are fired!”)

As is often the case, Anglophone countries have been on to the problem for a bit longer and in the USA, in particular, public debates about linguistic shirkers – migrants who fail to learn English and are assumed to do so because they are too lazy, too obstinate or too antagonistic towards their new country – have been around since the 18^th century. Ironically, for a long time German immigrants were seen as the most notorious linguistic shirkers of them all; Benjamin Franklin famously complained:

Why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion.

Today, it is more usually Chinese or Hispanic migrants who find themselves accused of being English-language learning refuseniks.

Anyone who has ever been in contact with migrants will know someone who has not learned the target language (well); but does that mean that migrants who fail to learn the national language do so because they are too lazy, lack the will power required or simply cannot be bothered?

Unfortunately, most of those who point the finger at migrant language shirkers vastly underestimate the effort involved in language learning. The consensus in applied linguistics is that language learning takes a long time and that the precise duration and final outcome as measured in proficiency level are almost impossible to predict as they depend on many factors, most of which are outside of the control of an individual language learner, such as age, level of education, aptitude, teaching program, language proximity or access to interactional opportunities.

Language learning is not at all a simple task and most people readily forget that it takes about twelve years to learn your first language. The first five or six years from birth are devoted to acquiring oral fluency and then another six years or so are needed to learn how to read and write, to acquire the academic and textual conventions of a language and also to extend grammatical structures, expand vocabulary and refine pragmatic conventions.

First language acquisition may take more time than you thought but its outcomes are relatively uniform (under the condition that schooling is universal in a population). By contrast, the outcomes of second language learning and the time it takes to achieve those outcomes are much more variable.

Putting a number on how long it takes to learn a new language is a popular exercise and estimates put forward range from a few hours to the ‘10,000-hour-rule’ provided by some Canadian educators. How is it possible that estimates of how long it takes to learn a second language can vary so widely?

To begin with, one needs to keep in mind that such estimates are often not based on the linguistic evidence but on practical considerations such as how many hours a typical course offered by a teaching institute takes or how much funding is available to cover the cost of a particular program. From a linguistic perspective, there are two problems with attempting to put a figure on how long it takes to learn a language: one is related to what is meant by ‘fluency’ and the other to learner variables.

Assessing the outcome of language learning

‘Fluency’ is often thought of as conversational fluency – the ability to have an everyday conversation. Young learners in particular can achieve conversational fluency quite quickly. However, the conversational ease of young learners often fools us into overlooking that they may have continued difficulty with the kind of context-reduced and cognitively demanding language that is necessary to succeed in school and in the professions. Conversely, the proficiency of older learners is often misjudged because even high-proficiency post-puberty learners tend to retain a ‘foreign’ accent.

Just as the fluency of children and adults is judged by different yardsticks, fluency will seem different for different people and different contexts. To be ‘fluent’ while shopping is different from being ‘fluent’ when undertaking university studies; to be ‘fluent’ as a supermarket check-out operator is different from being ‘fluent’ as a university student. Overall, the key point here is that ‘fluency’ means different things to different people and while we are often all too eager to pass judgment on the proficiency of those who have traces of complex language learning trajectories in their repertoires, our judgments are rarely particularly valid or reliable.

Integration shirking? (Source: deutschlandradiokultur.de)

Language learner variables

The problem that defining the endpoint of language learning is well-nigh impossible is compounded by the fact that a definite judgment on how much effort an individual will require to get to some point on the spectrum that is acceptable to those who pass judgment presents a problem of similar magnitude.

A BBC documentary about five Syrian refugees trying to learn German in Berlin describes five hard-working people who are keen to learn German; not a trace of refusal or resistance to learning the language can be heard in their voices. Even so, the outcome of their language learning efforts is far from impressive. The youngest in the group, 16-year-old Noor, seems to be making the best progress but even she explains that the “constant worrying” about her family left behind in Damascus makes it hard for her to concentrate. Her father, a man in his mid-40s, is similarly committed to learning German and establishing a future for himself and his family in Germany. Even so, he frequently misses his German language classes because they clash with appointments at the immigration authorities. It is only through these appointments that he can hope to regularize his status and to find a way for his wife and children back in Damascus to join him. So, he obviously has to prioritize bureaucratic appointments over attending language lessons.

Noor’s and Mohammad’s stories are just two examples of the many vagaries of adult language learning; many of which are outside of the control of the language learner. Some of the best-understood learner variables out of a sheer endless list are the following:

• Age: Adolescents and young adults are usually better language learners than older adults.
• Prior education: High school graduates and those with prior language learning experience have been found to make better language learners than those who have not learnt how to read and write in their first language.
• Socioeconomic status: Those who have the time and resources to set aside for dedicated language learning tend to outperform those who struggle to make ends meet.
• Gender: Some studies have found that men in employment were learning faster than stay-at-home housewives.
• Race: In an Australian study, European-looking students received more interactional opportunities than Asian-looking students; these interactional opportunities increased their confidence and resulted in better progress.
• Religion: A Canadian study found that Christian converts were learning faster once they joined a supportive church.
• Sheer luck: An Australian study found that a learner with a caring landlady made better progress than those whose accommodation arrangements were less favorable.

The list could go on and on. The general point is that your success at language learning is related to who you are and which hand you have been dealt in life.

The factors listed above – age, prior education, socio-economic status, gender, race, religion, luck – are by and large outside the control of the individual. What second language learning research shows above all is that learning another language is not an easy feat. It requires a considerable investment of resources and it makes a huge difference whether you are learning in a supportive community or one that rejects you. The ultimate outcome of second language learning efforts is not purely an act of willpower or the result of the learner’s personal choices.

The discourse around “integration shirking” is one of victim blaming

Blaming individuals for having made choices outside their control is patently unjust. Not only is the stigma of lack of willpower, laziness and pig-headed refusal to play their part unjust in itself but it also has unjust consequences: instead of seeking solutions to actual problems we put resources into addressing imaginary problems. The imaginary problem is that migrants need to be told that life in Germany without German or life in the US without English is hard; they will obviously know that from experience. What many of them cannot figure out is how to improve their German or English while also starting a new life through the medium of that language. And what receiving societies cannot figure out is how to facilitate the language learning of real people rather than the stick-figures of political slogans.

If you would like to read more about migrant language learning and social inclusion in diverse societies, you might be interested in my new book Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice, just out from Oxford University Press.

Piller, I. (2016). Linguistic diversity and social justice. Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199937240.003.0003

Do clouds over VW equal clouds over Germany?

The Volkswagen (VW) emissions scandal has received significant media coverage in and outside of Germany. Besides accounts of the developments that led to the discovery of Volkswagen’s unethical behaviour, the immediate impacts on the company’s finances, CEO Martin Winterkorn’s resignation and Matthias Mueller’s appointment as the new chief executive of the firm, a focus on wider impacts of the current affair quickly emerged. Not long and concerns were raised that the unethical actions of the car manufacturer could have negative consequences for the German automobile industry in general and the German and the European economy more broadly.

This has raised a related discussion and media anxiety about the implications of the Volkswagen affair for the trademark “made in Germany”. The German Handelsblatt (Daniel Delhaes 2015), for instance, cited various politicians expressing concern over the loss of the country’s reputation:

Auf alle Fälle ist das ein riesiger Schaden für die Industriemarke Deutschland. (“This is definitely a huge damage for the German industrial brand.”)

Es geht um die Glaubwürdigkeit des Gütesiegels‚‘made in Germany’. (“It is a matter of credibility of the quality label ‘made in Germany’.”)

Both politicians anticipate negative consequences not only for VW but for national reputation, too.

How do constructions of German cultural stereotypes and self-stereotypes become visible in the media reports concerned with the Volkswagen affair? How do they relate to the car manufacturer’s misconduct and how are they aimed at influencing the general public?

A careful analysis of the current media discourse may provide some insights into the discursive construction of “made in Germany” as a “quality label” and, more generally, the discursive construction of reputation as an economic asset. The discussion will be grounded in research in communication studies and applied linguistics that examines advertising as cultural discourse and shows how notions of national identities and ethno-cultural stereotypes are constructed and reproduced through discursive practices.

Volvo campaign: Breaking up with a German

German ethno-cultural stereotypes in advertising

Intercultural advertising has been shown to valorise languages in their symbolic rather than their communicative meaning. The symbolic function of languages is to be understood in this context as “the product of intercultural social, political, economic, historical and linguistic relations between countries” (Kelly-Holmes, 2000, p. 71). In what Kelly-Holmes defines as a deep-rooted ‘cultural competence hierarchy’, “Germans have been assigned the role of car-maker/engineer and brewer” (2000, p. 71). Piller notes that foreign languages in advertising are used “to associate the product with the ethno-cultural stereotype about the country where the language is spoken” (2003, p. 175). In the case of German, these are connotations of reliability, precision and innovation, above all regarding technology.

Hence, it is not surprising that it is a common marketing strategy amongst multinational companies to use the national language of their headquarters for advertising their products on the foreign market. Volkswagen and Audi are two successful examples of global corporations based in Germany that take advantage of this strategy by using the slogans ‘Volkswagen – Das Auto’ and ‘Vorsprung durch Technik’, respectively, in print and audio-visual ads.

It is first and foremost the recognition of these words as German, rather than their literal meaning, that is important for their success. For instance, a monolingual English-speaking Australian recently cited the Audi-slogan ‘Vorsprung durch Technik’ to me when he discovered that I was German. To my surprise, and despite the fact that he was able to pronounce the catchphrase quite well, he had no idea what it actually meant. I was German; the slogan was German; and that’s all that mattered.

It is not only German manufacturers who use ethno-cultural stereotypes to promote their products. A marketing campaign by the Swedish car manufacturer Volvo uses associations with German ‘efficiency’ and ‘order’ defensively to promote their own products.

How does all this relate to the Volkswagen scandal?

Volkswagen as a symbol for German cultural core values

Media reports about the Volkswagen scandal draw on the same ethno-cultural stereotypes of technological advancement and high quality:

A lot of Germany’s present economic success is based on engineering expertise, specialised technology and expensive heavy machinery sold to fire up China’s factories. […] But “Made in Germany” is supposed to be a quality trusted brand worth paying money for. (bbc.com; McGuinness 2015)

“Made in Germany is quality and trust. Now that trust is lost,” said Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer of the University of Duisburg-Essen. (autonews.com; Chambers 2015)

Thereby, the media reinforces the positive connotations with German national culture but, at the same time, mounts the argument that the company’s misconduct is threatening exactly these. This argument is strengthened by means of a link that the reports establish between Germany, “made in Germany”, the corresponding ethno-cultural stereotypes and Volkswagen itself. Autonews (Chambers 2015), as well as the German Handelsblatt (dpa 2015), provide good examples:

The great success of the export nation of Germany rests on the quality label ‘Made in Germany,'” said Marcel Fratzscher, head of the DIW economic institute in Berlin. “VW stands for this German quality — for perfection, reliability and trust.

Ob Volkswagen, ob Deutschland verlorenes Vertrauen zurückgewinnt, entscheidet sich auch bei der Aufarbeitung des Skandals. (“How the scandal is dealt with will determine whether VW and Germany can regain trust.”)

In examples such as these, Volkswagen is put into place as an emblem for the positive associations with Germany and “made in Germany”. But not only that: striking in these and the preceding excerpts is the recurring association with ‘trust’ that is put into place alongside the ethno-cultural stereotypes commonly connected with Germany and also Volkswagen. It seems to do two things. First, it enables the media, and the referenced commentators, to strengthen the argument that the positive connotations with German products have been challenged by the company’s wrongdoing. The use of ‘supposed to be’ in the second BBC comment indicates that one cannot be entirely sure whether the label “made in Germany” still stands for good quality. One of the commentators goes even further by saying that trust has already been ‘lost’. Second, and possibly even more important, it allows for a reinforcement and maintenance of the ethno-cultural stereotypes. It is not the quality that is ‘lost’ in the eyes of commentator Dudenhoeffer but the trust in this quality. In this way, quality is implicitly constructed as the dominant connotation.

What is achieved by introducing trust into this discourse?

Volkswagen. Das Auto.

The nation brand and Germany’s reputation are constructed as greater than just the sum of cultural values associated with the nation. ‘Reputation’ ties the belief in a certain moral standard to the cultural values which, only then, attain relevance. Therefore, trust issues regarding the positive cultural stereotypes must arise if a company like Volkswagen, which stands for the country’s reputation, acts against these moral standards. This construction of ‘reputation’ allows the media to paint Volkswagen as a ‘black sheep’ and to elaborate about possible nationwide consequences of the emissions scandal without saying that assumed high quality, reliability and precision of German products may no longer apply. That Volkswagen is the one to blame is also strongly expressed by the title of a Handelsblatt article:

Volkswagen und der “Anschlag auf den Standort Deutschland. (“Volkswagen and the ‘attack on Germany as a business location’.”)

“Anschlag” (“attack”) even has connotations of terrorism on the part of Volkswagen.

In sum, ‘reputation’ is an economic asset and a crucial aspect of Germany’s economic success. To minimize the risk of losing this national reputation a former national emblem can quickly become a villain.

The way in which language is used in the media coverage of the Volkswagen emission scandal has transformed a corporate issue into a nationwide cultural concern. Ethno-cultural stereotypes are not only questioned but also reinforced.

Media and political discourse are powerful institutions. However, they only constitute one side of the medal. If and how the receivers of their messages will be influenced by them, can only be seen in the long run. Since ethno-cultural stereotypes have slowly grown over time and are deep-rooted in people’s minds, it remains anyone’s guess whether the Volkswagen emission scandal will change people’s associations with Germany and German products.

References

Kelly-Holmes, H. (2000). Bier, Parfum, Kaas: Language Fetish in European Advertising. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 3(1), 67-82.

Piller, I. (2003). Advertising as a site of language contact Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 23, 170-183 DOI: 10.1017/S0267190503000254
Further reading

Chambers, M. (2015, September 22). Diesel scandal at VW threatens ‘Made in Germany’ image. Autonews.

Delhaes, D. (2015, September 23). ‘Made in Germany’ ist in Gefahr. Handelsblatt.

Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (2015, October 4). Volkswagen und der „Anschlag auf den Standort Deutschland“. Handelsblatt.

Nizaqete Bislimi (Source: DuMont Verlag / Franz Brück)

Some of the most striking images from the refugees who have been trekking across Europe are of families and children. Beyond the immediate perils of their journeys, migration inevitably changes families. As children are usually much quicker to learn new languages and adapt to new circumstances than adults, children and youths often inevitably become mediators between their parents and the host society.

Adults – migrant and local – often feel rather ambiguous about children as linguistic and cultural mediators: is a child that translates at a parent-teacher interview at school really to be trusted? Parents and teachers may feel apprehensive that the child is not interpreting “the truth” but may be representing their academic performance in a more favourable light than is actually warranted. Should not children be kept away from medical examinations? Parents and doctors often struggle with the fact that, where children act as mediators in a medical encounter, the child may gain knowledge of their parents’ bodies in ways that might be considered inappropriate or premature. And does not the balance of power overall shift in favour of the child? Are migrant parents “losing control” as the supposedly clear power hierarchy between adult and child breaks down when a migrant adult depends on a child to help them interact in the wider society?

A recently published autobiography shows a different side of child mediators. The autobiography titled Durch die Wand (“Through the wall”) is by Nizaqete Bislimi, a German lawyer in her mid-30s. Nizaqete’s story has been well-published in Germany for a number of years: born in Kosovo in 1979, Nizaqete’s family fled to Germany when she was fourteen years old. For thirteen years the family failed to achieve a secure legal status and lived under the constant threat of deportation. Even so, Nizaqete finished high school and graduated as one of the top students in her class. She went on to study law and is today partner in a law firm specializing in migration and citizenship law and also the president of the German Romani Federation.

Given the family’s precarious legal status over many years, it is not surprising that a typical experience during Nizaqete’s early years in Germany should have been that she needed to mediate between her mother and their (pro bono) lawyer. Nizaqete was ambitious, determined and, obviously, smart, and learned German quickly. Even so, “Amtsdeutsch” (“bureaucratic German”) and the legal register were beyond the teenager.

During one of their meetings with their lawyer, Nizaqete said to her mother “One day I will understand all this. I promise.” The lawyer explained that the only way for this to happen was for Nizaqete to study law.

Her career adviser had a different idea and recommended that she get married instead of going to university. Nizaqete’s ambitions clearly did not fit his stereotype of a young Romani refugee woman from the Balkan.

But Nizaqete had promised her mother, and she has succeeded.

The anxieties about child mediators mentioned above notwithstanding, Nizaqete’s experience deriving strength from acting as a linguistic and cultural mediator for her parents may not be unique.

Research with child language brokers has examined cognitive development, academic performance, parent-child relationships, emotional stress and moral development.

Nizaqete Bislimi with her parents on the day she was admitted to the bar (Source: Spiegelonline)

Cognitive development: because acting as linguistic and cultural mediator entails involvements in more complex situations than a child would normally encounter, for instance in legal or medical contexts, child mediators may develop higher problem-solving skills and better decision-making strategies (Morales & Hanson, 2005).

Academic performance: some studies have shown that acting as linguistic mediator is associated with higher scores on standardized tests (e.g., Dorner et al, 2007). Be that as it may, analysis of recorded parent-teacher interviews where the child interpreted between parent and teacher showed that children certainly did not lie to present their academic performance in a more favourable light than warranted (Sánchez & Orellana, 2006). On the contrary, they were likely to downplay praise from the teacher in translation.

Parent-child relationships: despite the common assumption that parents who have to enlist their children’s help to communicate outside the family are losing power and status, the evidence suggests otherwise. A US study, for instance, found that language brokering “may provide opportunities for communication and contact with parents that may contribute to adolescents feeling trusted and needed by parents” (Chao 2006, p. 295).

Emotional stress: there is concern in the literature that it may be traumatic for children to interpret for parents in contexts, particularly of a medical nature, where violence is under discussion or where they will gain insights into taboo topics such as parents’ sexuality. An interview study in the US found that practitioners in such cases often rejected the child as mediator in order to protect them from emotional stress (Cohen et al. 1999)

Moral development: some studies view linguistic and cultural mediation as a form of “required helpfulness” similarly to having to help out with domestic chores, and required helpfulness has been associated with maturity and moral development (e.g., Bauer 2013).

Overall, in migration contexts, it is often inevitable that children take on the roles of linguistic and cultural brokers between the adults in their family and the wider society. Given that this is the case, overburdening the activity with all kinds of anxieties is not helpful. In fact, child mediators may “make it possible for their parents to live, eat, shop and otherwise sustain themselves as workers, citizens and consumers in their host country” (Orellana 2009, p. 124). Conversely, they provide an important service to the host society which might be struggling to provide professional translators and interpreters in all the contexts where they might be necessary.

For many children contributing in this way to their families and societies is normal and will give them the strength to succeed against the odds. We should aim to help them with their brokering roles by developing their multilingual proficiencies and skills and by smoothing their paths; so that we’ll see many more success stories like that of Nizaqete Bislimi.

References

Bauer, E. (2013). Reconstructing Moral Identities in Memories of Childhood Language Brokering Experiences International Migration, 51 (5), 205-218 DOI: 10.1111/imig.12030

Chao, R. K. (2006). The Prevalence and Consequences of Adolescents’ Language Brokering for Their Immigrant Parents. In M. H. Bornstein & L. R. Cote (Eds.), Acculturation and Parent-Child Relationships: Measurement and Development (pp. 271-296). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Cohen, S., Moran-Ellis, J., & Smaje, C. (1999). Children as Informal Interpreters in GP Consultations: Pragmatics and Ideology. Sociology of Health & Illness, 21(2), 163-186. doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.00148

Dorner, L. M., Orellana, M. F., & Li‐Grining, C. P. (2007). “I Helped My Mom,” and It Helped Me: Translating the Skills of Language Brokers into Improved Standardized Test Scores. American Journal of Education, 113(3), 451-478. doi: 10.1086/512740

Morales, A., & Hanson, W. E. (2005). Language Brokering: An Integrative Review of the Literature. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 27(4), 471-503. doi: 10.1177/0739986305281333

Orellana, M. F. (2009). Translating Childhoods: Immigrant Youth, Language, and Culture. New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Rutgers University Press.

Sánchez, I. G., & Orellana, M. F. (2006). The Construction of Moral and Social Identity in Immigrant Children’s Narratives-in-Translation. Linguistics and Education, 17(3), 209-239. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2006.07.001

Further reading

Bislimi, N. (2015). Durch die Wand: Von der Asylbewerberin zur Rechtsanwältin [Through the Wall: From Asylum Seeker to Lawyer]. Köln: Dumont Buchverlag.

Jessen, J. (2015, 2015-10-02). Nizaqete Bislimi – Vom Flüchtlingskind zur Anwältin. WAZ.

Michaelis, S. (2015, 2015-10-03). Nizaqete Bislimi startete vom Flüchtlingsheim aus eine Karriere als Anwältin. Wiesbadener Tagblatt.

Michaelis, S. (2015, 2015-09-21). Von der Asylbewerberin zur Anwältin. Der Spiegel.

Peters, F. (2013, 2013-05-30). Die Roma, die unbedingt nach Oben wollte. Die Welt.

Yordanova, Y. (2013, 2013-12-13). Nizaqete Bislimi – Wiedergefundene Identität. Deutsche Welle.

Condemned to consume

My migration newsfeed in the past few weeks has been dominated by news about the Syrian refugee crisis and the various European and international responses. But there have also been two other noteworthy migration news: one relates to the changing face of immigration to Canada as increasingly highly educated migrants are admitted and the other relates to revelations that the Australian 7-Eleven convenience stores systematically exploit international students and other temporary visa holders.

How do these various news hang together?

“Traditional” immigration countries such as Australia and Canada have a relatively small refugee intake in comparison to their various work migration schemes. While the former dominate the news, the latter dominate the numbers. According to ABS data, the net immigration to Australia, in the financial year 2013-14, for instance, was over 212,000 people; humanitarian entrants accounted for only around six percent of these. So, maybe unusually internationally, Australia accepts far more “economic migrants” than “refugees.”

The rationale for this selection is that skilled and well-educated migrants, who fill labour shortages, are good for the economy; while refugees are a “burden” on the economy. One of the many complexities that this dichotomy overlooks is, of course, that refugees are often likely to be skilled and well-educated, too.

Let’s ignore that detail for the moment and ask whether migrants’ skills and education necessarily lead to social inclusion.

Social inclusion is a notoriously difficult concept to define. Despite frequent references to social inclusion in contemporary national and international policies, there is actually a notable lack of consensus as to what constitutes social inclusion. Most commentators see the promotion of economic well-being as constituting the core of social inclusion. However, the contributors to two recent collections devoted to “Linguistic Diversity and Social Inclusion” that I (co)edited for the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism and the Australian Review of Applied Linguistics found it necessary to go beyond the economic core meaning of social inclusion to also include a wider meaning of social inclusion as a sense of community participation and belonging. The contributors showed that inclusion is a multifaceted phenomenon and linguistically diverse populations may well be included on one level but excluded on another.

Recent research with Soviet Jewish migrants to Germany offers a highly pertinent discussion. The researcher, Sveta Roberman, undertook a year-long ethnographic project to examine the migration and settlement experiences of this group. She developed the concept of “inclusive exclusion” in response to the following observation:

I kept sensing a peculiar atmosphere, intangible and hard to describe, that pervades the lives of many, an aura of dissatisfaction and restlessness that borders on—or has become—apathy and resignation, articulated in an often-expressed sentiment: “We are kind of existing here, not really living.” (Roberman 2015, p. 744)

It’s an observation that resonates with a lot of the research into the language learning and settlement experiences of adult migrants conducted with very different origin groups by my students and myself here in Australia.

The people Roberman conducted her research with are Jewish migrants from the former Soviet Union, mostly from Russia and Ukraine, who settled in Germany in the 1990s and early 2000s. About 220,000 Soviet Jews were admitted during that period. For the re-unified Germany, accepting substantial numbers of Jewish migrants was yet another step on the long road of atonement for the Holocaust. It was hoped that these migrants would contribute to a revival of Jewish cultural and religious life in Germany.

“Germany of all places?!” (Source: Jewish Museum Frankfurt)

Around 80% of these migrants were tertiary-educated and had established professional careers in the Soviet Union. Most of them were secular and, because “Jew” was an ethnic and not a religious category in the Soviet Union, only about a third of these migrants ended up joining Jewish religious communities in Germany. In fact, in contrast to Soviet Jews migrating to Israel or the USA, those coming to Germany were probably least motivated by ideological reasons. Roberman’s participants did not hesitate to explain that they had migrated for economic reasons, in search of a better life.

This context seems ideal to examine the social inclusion of migrants: a highly-educated migrant group, a high degree of cultural similarity between migrants and hosts, and public desire on the part of the destination society to embrace this particular migrant group.

A migration fairy-tale? Not quite.

In the way social inclusion is usually conceived as economic participation and cultural recognition, Roberman’s participants had little to complain:

When speaking about their encounters with the host country, my interviewees were not troubled by their economic situation; they felt secure and protected in that sphere of their lives. Neither did they complain about the lack of possibilities for the articulation of their Russian or Jewish identities: the former could be practiced at the range of Russian cultural centers, clubs, and libraries, while the latter could be actualized and maintained within Jewish communal centers and organizations. Even the constraint they faced in political participation, because many immigrants lacked full citizenship, was hardly an issue for my interviewees. (Roberman 2015, p. 747)

Migration had enabled the participants to partake of Western economic affluence, they had received significant, though not always full, legal and political citizenship rights, and, as a group, cultural recognition.

So what was missing? Access to regular, stable and meaningful employment.

Participants who, at the time of migration, were in their mid-30s or older found it extremely difficult to find employment commensurate with their education, skills and experience. This was not for lack of trying. Participants were deeply influenced by the Soviet work ethos and extremely resourceful in their attempts to find work. The German state also helped with the provision of language and training courses and a suite of short-term work and internship programs designed to help migrants transition into full-time regular employment.

Except they didn’t.

The usual intangible barriers of accent, non-recognition of overseas qualifications, lack of local experience, etc. that we have often discussed here on Language on the Move applied in this case, too. Age discrimination was another factor. Middle-aged participants in the study ended up trying to secure stable employment for years. During that time they were supported by welfare and a range of casual short-term jobs, including state-sponsored employment schemes.

Olga, a qualified and experienced teacher, for instance, arrived in Germany when she was 40 years old. Her qualifications were not recognized and she was involved in various re-training schemes. She also held various casual jobs as an attendant in an aged-care home and as a social worker. When she turned 50 without having achieved regular standard employment, she was officially “removed” from the labour market and declared an “early retiree.”

Being unable to find regular employment meant that the participants struggled to construct a coherent life-story and to see meaning in their migration, as was the case for Olga:

I was sitting in her apartment as she tried to compose a coherent narrative of the 10-year period of her life in Germany. But that seemed to be an unachievable task: the flow of her life narrative stopped at the point of emigration. What followed were fragmented facts that she resisted bringing together into a meaningful story, seeing little achievement or sense in her 10-year migration experience. (Roberman 2015, p. 752)

Another participant, Mark, who had been a cameraman in Kiev and was 53 years old when he arrived in Germany had given up looking for work after six years and lived on welfare. He said, “Once I had some objectives in life, I aspired to something, I had some plans, […] Today, I wake up in the morning, and I have one and the same question to ask myself: what do I do today?” (quoted in Roberman 2015, p. 754).

Sveta Roberman, Sweet Burdens (SUNY Press, 2015)

Like others in his situation, he filled his life with surfing the internet, watching TV, attending doctor’s appointments and, above all, shopping. Some developed elaborate routes to stretch out daily grocery shopping, others threw themselves into the pursuit of specials and sales. While these activities fill time, in the long run they breed a deep sense of isolation and loneliness. Being an anonymous shopper trapped them in the position of social strangers.

At one level, consumption spaces are some of the least discriminatory spaces imaginable; one participant made this point with regard to language proficiency:

One does not need language in the supermarket. The system is itself interested to sell you the thing, and the system finds its way to do it; they succeed in selling it to you in any way. It does not matter what language you speak. (quoted in Roberman 2015, p. 756)

At the same time, this participant makes the point that consumption spaces are spaces of extreme dislocation. In the supermarket or shopping mall it does not matter who you are. In fact, it does not even matter that you are there. Being reduced to filling their time with consumption resulted in a sharp feeling of невостребованность: “uselessness,” “redundancy,” like unclaimed luggage. One participant compared her situation to that of cows who are allowed to graze on lush green pastures but nobody bothers to come and milk them.

In short, participants were free to consume: they had achieved a comfortable and economically secure existence through their migration. However, their access to resources of real value – stable and meaningful work – was constrained. In this context, the freedom to consume condemned them to consume. Consumption did not result in a sense of dignity and self-worth, it did not allow them to forge coherent positive life-stories and it did not provide them with a sense of belonging. While included economically, legally and culturally, their participation is ultimately constrained – a condition Roberman calls “exclusive inclusion.”

Our economic system is characterised by overproduction and there is the regular need to dispose of surplus goods. Consequently, even relatively poor members of affluent consumer societies, such as Roberman’s irregularly employed and/or welfare-dependent interviewees, are readily included in the sphere of consumption. By contrast, stable and regular employment is in short supply. Exclusion from this scare and valuable resource continues to be a powerful way to reproduce social hierarchies. Disadvantaged groups of local people may be similarly excluded but migrants are particularly vulnerable on post-industrial labour markets and to the unemployment, underemployment and exploitation that go for “flexibility.” As Roberman (2015, p. 759f.) concludes:

Exclusive inclusion is a much more civilized, camouflaged form of exclusion. It seems to be mild. But, in spite of its apparent mildness, exclusive inclusion, which limits access to social resources of real value and to participation in the arenas of social recognition and belonging, is no less destructive in the ways it undermines the excluded individual’s world, threatens humanness, and strains the social fabric as a whole.

References

Piller, I. (2014). Linguistic Diversity and Social Inclusion in Australia. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 37(3), 190-197.

Piller, I., & Takahashi, K. (2011). Linguistic Diversity and Social Inclusion. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 14(4), 371 – 381.

Roberman, S. (2015). Not to Be Hungry Is Not Enough: An Insight Into Contours of Inclusion and Exclusion in Affluent Western Societies Sociological Forum, 30 (3), 743-763 DOI: 10.1111/socf.12190

Further reading

Zwanzig Jahre Jüdische Zuwanderung nach Deutschland. (2009, 2009-09-22). Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland.

Ferguson, A., & Toft, K. (2015, 2015-09-02). 7-Eleven: The Price of Convenience. ABC Four Corners.

Goldmann, A., & Krauss, M. (2015, 2015-01-21). Weniger Jüdische Zuwanderer im Jahr 2013. Jüdische Allgemeine.

Ortiz, A. (2015, 2015-09-08). Increasingly Mobile and Educated: The Future of Canadian Immigration. World Education News and Reviews.

Shcherbatova, S., & Plessentin, U. (2013, 2013-11-18). Zuwanderung und Selbstfindung: Die Jüdischen Gemeinden im Wiedervereinten Deutschland. Heinrich Böll Stiftung: Migrationspolitisches Portal.

Sveta Roberman recently also published a book about the larger study, which, if the Google preview is anything to go by, is even more fascinating:

Roberman, S. (2015). Sweet Burdens: Welfare and Communality among Russian Jews in Germany. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Children in a bilingual program in Hamburg (Source: AlsterKind)

It is a key finding of contemporary educational research that the children of migrants experience educational disadvantage vis-à-vis their native-born peers. The educational disadvantage of bilingual children has been documented in education systems as diverse as those of Britain, Germany, Japan and the USA. The discrepancy between the home language and the language of the school has been found to play a central role in educational disadvantage: while educational institutions continue to maintain a monolingual habitus, migrant children bring to school the experience of multilingualism.

Throughout the world, schools have been extremely slow to adapt to the realities of linguistic diversity; and the obsession of educational systems with linguistic homogeneity constitutes one of the great paradoxes of our time. While the benefits of bilingual education have been documented in a substantial body of research spanning a number of decades, the implementation of bilingual programs has been relatively slow, small-scale, discontinuous and often politically controversial. That is why academic monitoring of bilingual programs and dissemination of knowledge about bilingual programs continues to be important.

Much of the research about bilingual education for migrant students has been dominated by Spanish programs in the USA, and research in other contexts continues to be relatively scarce. A 2011 article by Joana Duarte about a six-year-monitoring project of bilingual elementary schools in the Northern German port city of Hamburg offers a fascinating exception.

Since the early 2000s, Hamburg has been offering bilingual programs in Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish. These programs have been designed as dual-immersion programs and the aim is to enroll children whose stronger language is German or the target language in roughly equal numbers. Over a six-year period, the bilingual programs were monitored by researchers from the University of Hamburg, and Duarte’s article focusses particularly on the Portuguese program.

Like many dual-language immersion programs, the bilingual programs under examination have three key aims:

• Development of high-level bilingual proficiencies in German and Portuguese, including the ability to read and write in both languages (biliteracy)
• Achievement in content areas such as mathematics, sciences and social studies at or above grade level
• Development of intercultural competences

In order to achieve these goals about half of the curriculum is taught bilingually: German and Portuguese language classes are taught contrastively and with a strong focus on linguistic form. Social Studies are taught through a team-teaching approach by a German- and a Portuguese-speaking teacher, and Music and parts of Mathematics are taught by a bilingual teacher who uses both languages.

Didactically, there is a strong focus on explicit and contrastive language instruction, and explicit grammar and form-focused instruction is an important feature of all instruction, including subject instruction.

So, how does this kind of program work for the students? The researchers conducted a three-way comparison of students in the program with Portuguese bilingual migrant students and native German monolingual students at a ‘regular’ German elementary school, and also with native Portuguese monolingual students studying in Portugal.

To begin with, the students in the bilingual program significantly outperformed their Portuguese-speaking peers in a ‘regular’ German elementary school on assessments of academic language proficiency and subject content. Their gains were such that, over the six years of elementary school, the initial condition of linguistic heterogeneity disappeared and their performance was equal to that of monolingual German children after controlling for socio-economic background and individual student cognitive ability.

This means that bilingual education in a dual-immersion program can completely erase the educational disadvantage of migrant students.

Comparison with Portuguese students in Portugal showed an additional bonus: Portuguese-speaking migrant children in the program in Hamburg reached proficiency levels in Portuguese that are comparable to those of monolingual Portuguese children in Portugal.

Migrant children are disadvantaged in monolingual schools because they face the double task of learning a new language and new subject content simultaneously and they do so in the presence of native-born monolingual students, for whom the educational system is designed, and who thus ‘only’ face the task of content learning. Where schools level the playing field through the provision of bilingual education, as the Hamburg programs described here do, they not only overcome language-based educational disadvantage but also enable migrants to accumulate cultural capital by institutionalizing and certifying bilingual proficiency.

Duarte, J. (2011). Migrants’ educational success through innovation: The case of the Hamburg bilingual schools. International Review of Education / Internationale Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft / Revue Internationale de l’Education, 57(5/6), 631-649. doi: 10.2307/41480148 (available for download from academia.edu)

Preschool in Karlsruhe, Germany (Source: DW)

Ever since my research for my 2002 book Bilingual Couples Talk I’ve regularly been told by people – or been asked to confirm their belief – that a cross-cultural relationship is beneficial once the couple have children. The children are expected to not only be bilingual but also to enjoy cognitive advantages from growing up with more than one culture and to be more open minded and better communicators. I’ve always struggled how to respond because, of course, nothing is ever this simple. A 2011 study of the cognitive and linguistic abilities of various groups of preschoolers in Germany confirms the assumption – children of intermarried couples outperform all other groups on a cognitive ability test – and, simultaneously, explain why it is a fallacy that confounds ethnicity and class.

The study by Birgit Becker examines the cognitive and linguistic abilities of three- and four-year-olds with different types of parents:

• Children whose parents and grandparents were all born in Germany (the ‘native’ group)
• Children whose parents were both born in Turkey (the ‘second generation’)
• Children whose parents were both born in Germany but each parent had at least one parent born in Turkey (the ‘third generation’)
• Children with one first-generation and one second-generation Turkish parent (the ‘2A generation’)
• Children with one ‘native’ parent and one first- or second generation Turkish parent (the ‘intermarried’ group)

The cognitive abilities of a total of 1,008 children were tested with the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children. The German version of the test was used but it was administered by bilingual researchers and the children could choose to do the test in German, in Turkish or they could mix the two languages as they pleased. So, language proficiency is unlikely to confound test results here, as it so often does in cognitive testing of bilingual and minority children.

Adapted from Becker (2011, p. 448)

The diagram shows that the children from the intermarried group outperformed all the other groups, including the natives. It also shows that, with the exception of the intermarried group, all the other ‘Turkish’ groups performed significantly lower than the ‘native’ group. Children in the ‘2A group’ – with one first-generation and one second-generation Turkish parent – performed particularly poorly. In fact, ‘2A’ parents might be considered ‘intermarried,’ too; but, obviously, their intermarried status is not beneficial for the child.

Once the full diagram is revealed, part of the conundrum is solved.

Source: Becker (2011, p. 448)

Once parents’ socio-economic status (as measured by their level of education and their occupational status) and educational resources (as measured by the number of books in the home; the frequency of bedtime stories; or the number of visits to the zoo) are controlled, the ethnic differences disappear and the influence of all the above ethnic groups/generations is reduced to non-significance.

All group differences regarding children’s cognitive skills can be fully explained by families’ socioeconomic status and educational resources. (Becker 2011, p. 447)

What seems like an ethnic effect (‘children of intermarried couples are smarter’ or ‘German children are smarter than Turkish children’) is, in fact, an effect of socioeconomic status and educational resources; in other words, a well-known class effect. However, class maps onto ethnicity, in this case, as elsewhere. The vast majority of Turkish families in the sample, which can be assumed to be representative of Turks in Germany (or, at least, southwest Germany, where the study was conducted), are poorly educated, work in low-status occupations, and have few educational resources at their disposal.

As far as the two ‘mixed’ groups – ‘2A’ and ‘intermarried’ – are concerned a process of negative and positive selection can be assumed to apply respectively.

Having a first-generation mother and a second-generation father constitutes some sort of ‘double jeopardy’ for the child: the mother is much less likely to speak German than even first-generation women married to first-generation men; and the father is even less likely to have completed secondary education than other Turkish second-generation men. As the researcher explains, second-generation men who ‘import’ brides from the country of origin are likely to be negatively selected on various dimensions and their ‘imported’ brides will lack knowledge and resources that are useful to raising a child in the destination country.

By contrast, a process of positive selection works in favor of a child with a native and a migrant parent. Not only will the native parent ‘automatically’ have country-specific knowledge and resources but the migrant parent is likely to be positively selected with regard to level of education, proficiency in German, and general ‘openness’ and ‘integration.’ This is particularly true in the case German-Turkish intermarriages, which are comparatively rare and only account for five percent of all marriages of first- and second-generation Turks in Germany.

In sum, if intermarriage is an expression of parental cosmopolitanism, it is beneficial for children. Not because there is any intrinsic value in intermarriage but because that is how educational reproduction works: well-educated parents with stable jobs, parents who read to their children and who engage in a wide range of family activities confer an advantage on their children. It is just that the advantages – as well as the injuries – of class are increasingly mapped onto ethnicity, race or ‘culture.’

Becker, B. (2011). Cognitive and Language Skills of Turkish Children in Germany: A Comparison of the Second and Third Generation and Mixed Generational Groups International Migration Review, 45 (2), 426-459 DOI: 10.1111/j.1747-7379.2011.00853.x