Acceso usuarios
Kamilla György-Ullholm
Most of the immigrant groups, wherever they settled down, have frequently wished to maintain their language and central aspects of their culture over one or more generation(s). However, to which degree and in which way the language maintenance efforts of the immigrants have been assured in different countries has been shown to depend mostly on the host societies and their language policy and just barely on the immigrants themselves (Glenn & de Jong, 1996). Sweden is internationally known as a pluralistic country, providing supplemental instruction in the languages of immigrant minorities as part of the regular education. However, the mother tongue instruction system established in the 1970s has undergone several changes during the last decades. In an earlier study the effects of current Swedish language policy and its implementation on a micro level have been examined, using Hungarian, one of the country 's minor immigrant languages, as an ex a m p l e ( György-Ullholm, in press). This paper examines the second generation's opportunities to reach active bilingualism, the officially expressed goal of Swedish minority education. Nevertheless, the results of the study indicate that monolingualismor in the best case passive bilingualism are the most probable outcomes of the current language-in-education policy for these pupils.
