Migrants' Resources: Multilingualism and Transnational Mobility. A Study on Learning Paths and School to Job Transition of Young Portuguese Migrants

Abstract

In this contribution, the results of an empirical study on young immigrants' learning paths and school to job transition are presented. The study focused on the strategies of successful students from the Portuguese immigrant minority in Hamburg. One aim was to find out whether the young people could profit by their migration experiences and multilingual skills. Increasing the multilingualism of individuals is an official goal of the European Union, and it is predicted that the labour market will give increasing importance to the ability to communicate and work in contexts of linguistic and cultural diversity. The question was, though, whether students from an immigrant minority, whose parents had come to Germany in the course of the labour recruitment, could benefit from this development. Interestingly, the young people of the sample turned out to be highly flexible during their future orientations, considering options in Germany as well as in their country of origin. Their strategies and orientations during school to work transition were analysed on the basis of Pierre Bourdieu's model of the linguistic market and from the perspective of the sociological concept of transnational migration.