Heritage or cultural capital: ideologies of language in Scottish Chinese family life

The purpose of this report is to discuss language ideologies and language management in relation to the themes of migration, aspiration and social class mobility of Scottish Chinese families. It draws on long-term participant-observation fieldwork in the city of Edinburgh to discuss the recent trend among Cantonese-speaking Chinese families to enroll their Scottish-born children in Mandarin language classes. The report draws on Grillo's work on language hierarchies to explore how much Scottish Chinese parents really value Chinese languages, and for what purpose. It concludes that language shift has not begun with the rise of China, or with the arrival since the 1990s of “new” migrants from mainland China to Europe. Rather, flexibility in language choice has been a characteristic of migrant life for many decades and a key element in the economic and educational achievements of Scottish Chinese families.