The preponderance of minimal second language acquisition by immigrants worldwide is striking. This paper proposes a theoretical model, which analyzes the underlying forces that contribute to this outcome of minimal secondary language acquisition by immigrants in such diverse immigrant-receiving countries as Canada, Germany, Israel and the United States. It is argued that the weak incentive structures for second language acquisition for an immigrant appear in four analytically separate spheres including the labour market, political, social, and education spheres. Furthermore, two integration regimes are imposed in these spheres - no government interference, or government-mandated minimum language acquisition after arrival. In all cases and in all spheres, it is argued that, for the majority of immigrants, the weakest level of second language acquisition - minimum oral and minimum written - is the optimal outcome given their incentive structure. In addition, the labour market is the primary determinant of this outcome. Finally, several policy measures to increase the incentives for further second language acquisition are explored.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.