Parents’ perspectives on raising bilingual and bicultural children in Sweden : a Somali Case study

Abstract: This thesis is a case-study on bilingualism and biculturalism from Somalian perspectives. The aim of the present study is to explore raising bilingual and bicultural children in Sweden from parents’ views. It focuses on three questions: 1. What are the parental policies and strategies used to maintain one’s heritage language and culture, as well as to integrate into the society of a host country by learning its language and culture?; 2. How do parents think that their choices of upbringing might shape the everyday life of children?; and 3. What challenges do parents encounter when raising bilingual and bicultural children?. Qualitative data was collected based on individual in-depth interviews with six Somali parents living in Sweden, each parent having at least one child between the age of three and thirteen years old. A thematic analysis has been applied to the collected material. The findings of the present study show that, based on the parents’ viewpoints, maintaining the language entails preserving the cultural identity. This perspective-based study also found that heritage language maintenance is a collective task between all family members when looking at parent-child interactions, and children are active agents who can negotiate language choice and use at familial settings. Parents believe that successful bilingualism is crucial for their children’s everyday lives in terms of family and community ties, understanding different people and cultures, career prospects, to name a few while, children with insufficient knowledge of heritage language are bullied and isolated within the same ethnic group. However, the study findings suggest further investigation on how gender ideologies correlate with heritage language maintenance.