Repertori plurilingui di migranti e immigrati in Lombardia: un'indagine esplorativa

The migratory fluxes towards Italy brought attention to linguistic and social matters. It has been often asked if language learning might influence overall integration and whether new policies to promote multiculturalism and multilingualism are required. Our research is part of migration sociolinguistics, a relatively new field of research in Italy. Particularly, we are concerned with studies that investigate language shift, the process through which an individual starts to speak a new language at the expense of others they previously knew. This thesis consists of a replication of surveys performed in Bologna, Pavia and Turin over the past twenty years, aiming to offer qualitative analysis of the languages and linguistic uses employed by immigrants or sons of immigrants. Our survey was conducted in Milan and Pavia, and the lack of a statistically representative sample renders our study exploratory in nature. The analysis will be based on anonymous questionnaires and will allow us to formulate sociocultural and sociolinguistic considerations. We will examine two distinct samples (20 underage people and 50 adults), reconstructing their migratory path, family structure and friendship networks. We will analyse correlations between the language of choice and personal and social characteristics (such as country of origin, gender, number of years since migrating and educational level). Finally, these results will be compared to results of previous studies.  In general, the people who participated in the survey do not refrain from using the Italian language neither within their families nor with their friends. The neglect of the native language is not always due to necessity, but sometimes results from a conscious choice. In particular, the underage group seems to show the first signs of an incomplete native language acquisition.