Bringing your homeland with you – first generation migrants´ decision to pass on their mother tongue to their descendants

Migrations have always been a part of history, especially for people from the Balkan Peninsula. Due to economical, political, or military events, people from the Ex-Yugoslavian republics reached out to many western European countries, hoping they will help them find a peaceful home in the future. One of these countries is certainly Austria – only in 1991, over 198.000 people from former Yugoslavian countries fled to Austria (Bonifazi, Mamolo, 2004) , mainly to its capital – Vienna. In the study from 2011, almost 500.000 people in Austria were in possession of Serbian, Bosnian, or Croatian citizenship. (Memic, 2012). These people, most of them without ever encountering with German, in fear for their lives and with a strong desire to leave those horrible events behind them, made various decisions when it came to passing the essential part of their heritage to their descendants – their mother tongue. However, their knowledge of German, due to the lack of contact with the Germanspeaking society, remained inadequate. (Wojnesitz, 2009) Nevertheless, some of them did not encourage their children in keeping the language alive, resulting in them being semilingual. What my main goal in this study is, is to find out what major idea hides behind their attitude towards passing on their mother tongue to their children, and what results did it bring. Through a questionnaire, structured in a way that explores their relationship with Austria, their homeland, their children, and themselves, fifty people between the ages of 28 – 68 decided to share their point of view, long after they left the Balkans. My study shows that the majority of people find it really important for their children to understand and speak Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian – almost 90%, although only a bit more than 40% speak only Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian to their children. This also results in the fact that only 35% of children speak only their mother tongue with their parents, and over 20% of children speak only German to one another. 50% of those people whose children do not speak their mother tongue said they feel really sorry because of that. That shows us that, although the integration was successful, nearly half of the participants regret that decision. However, the majority decided to bring the piece of their homeland with them not only by passing on their language but also by keeping the traditions alive.

This individual article from the Proceedings is published here.