Parental Ideologies and Family Language Policies among Spanish-speaking Migrants to New Zealand

The latest New Zealand Census figures indicate that between 2006 and 2013 over five thousand speakers of Spanish joined the nation’s population, mostly as the result, we can assume, of the recent spike in immigration from Spanish-speaking countries. Within migrant and/or transnational families, the maintenance of linguistic and cultural legacies depends on effective intergenerational transmission of the heritage language, which in turn is dependent on parental decisions on language practices and management in the home. In view of this, what do Spanish-speaking migrants to New Zealand take in consideration when making decisions relating to family language policies? The present article reports on a small qualitative study of the beliefs at the basis of the self-reported home language policies of a group of New Zealand immigrants in the transmission of their native language(s) to their children. Through a specific focus on narrative data from a small number of Spanish-speaking participants, it illustrates these parents’ attitudes towards their part in the bi/multilingual development of their children, highlighting, in particular, the key role that local, mixed-origin Spanish-speaking communities can play in supporting and extending linguistic and cultural maintenance in the home.