Aims and Objectives: I examined the decision-making rationalities of Iranian–Canadian immigrant parents and the epistemological and sociocultural determinants that inform their decisions on their children’s linguistic developmental arc. Accordingly, I investigated the intersection of neoliberal ideologies and parental agency and their role in the structuring of investment in dominant and heritage languages. The research addresses parents’ navigation of language education choices within a neoliberal framework. Design/Methodology/Approach: This qualitative multiple-case inquiry was situated within a sociolinguistic framework informed by Norton’s concepts of investment and imagined communities. Accordingly, I adopted a multiple-individual narrative design within an interpretive paradigm to unearth the complexity of these dynamics and to explore the interplay among language, identity, and ideology. Data and Analysis: The dataset comprised survey responses from 20 Iranian immigrant parents residing in four Canadian provinces, with follow-up in-depth interviews conducted with a subset of seven respondents. I analysed the data using cyclical coding, constant comparison, and triangulation to identify patterns in language investment, identity, and ideological orientation. Findings/Conclusions: Findings showed that participants prioritised English and French, the dominant and official languages of Canada, as instruments of upwards mobility and socioeconomic integration. The findings also indicated that heritage-language education, particularly Farsi, was marginalised in this process. Pre-migration experiences under neoliberal regimes appear to shape parental perceptions of language as economic capital, often at the expense of cultural preservation. Originality: This study contributes to the corpus of knowledge through an examination of the intersection between pre-migration English language teaching histories in Iran and Canada’s official bilingualism and the effects on Iranian–Canadian parents’ investment in their children’s learning pathways. Significance/Implications: The findings foreground the salience of inclusive language policies that recognise immigrant families’ diverse linguistic resources and the necessity of educational frameworks oriented towards the valorisation of plurilingual repertoires rather than their subordination to dominant-language imperatives.
Ahmad Zirak Ghazani (Mon,) studied this question.