CHILDREN’S PERSPECTIVES ON BILINGUALISM : A qualitative study on how Somali children talk about being bilingual in a Swedish context

Abstract: This is a qualitative study on bilingualism from Somali children’s perspectives. It aims to examine how Somali-Swedish bilinguals understand their bilingual experiences in a Swedish context. It looks at questions that relate to their views on language use in family and peer group interactions, their attitude towards heritage language maintenance, and challenges they may face in their everyday bilingual experiences. Three interviews were carried out with six children of Somali background between the age of 12-15 years, interviewed in pairs, and the empirical data were subsequently analyzed thematically. The findings of the case study show that children have a high-level of awareness about achieving monolingual-like bilingualism. This is linked to their language investment in Somali and Swedish languages in order to be better members of both the Somali community and the Swedish society. From the interviews, it became clear that Somali and Swedish are equally important for their everyday life for a variety of reasons, including: maintaining healthy family relationships and bonds, continuing contact and ties with extended-family, developing ethnic and societal identities, and understanding and fostering friendship. However, many experienced challenges such as bullying and embarrassment as a result of, for instance, insufficient knowledge of their language or avoidance of using multiple languages in public for fear of being mocked. Furthermore, children are active agents in their learning and in acquiring proficiency in Somali and Swedish as they explain their choice of preserving their heritage while they negotiate with teachers to find a balance between language demands in the parental interactions and those with others in their ethnic group, and achieving native-like mastery of spoken Swedish.