Thomas Bak & Dina Mehmedbegovic

When I first met Dina Mehmedbegovic in September 2016 at the multilingualism panel of the European Commission in Brussels, I was impressed with her energy, expertise and enthusiasm. Since then we have been working together, integrating our respective fields of education and cognitive science. With time, I learned how her family and personal story, including different types of voluntary as well as forced migration, shaped her deep understanding of the psychological, cultural and linguistic challenges facing migrants. I cannot think of a better person to write a language-related blog for International Migrants Day.
Thomas H Bak, Co-Director Bilingualism Matters

‘Don’t speak to me in our language, when you pick me up from school’: Language loss and maintenance in migrant families

By Dina Mehmedbegovic, UCL

Today, 18th December is the UN Day of Migrants. On this day in 1990 UN signed the International Migrant Convention protecting the rights of migrants and their families. It took another 13 years for the Convention to reach the threshold needed for its implementation – acceptance by 20 countries. Its main aim is to protect human rights of currently around 250 million people identified as migrants world-wide. Not many are aware of this date and not many are aware that UNESCO rights of children include a right to education in mother tongue/home language. [Read more…]

Post by Thomas H Bak, Co-director of Bilingualism Matters

There is hardly an idea as deeply ingrained and universally shared across academia as the belief in the value of education. Education is a good thing, and the more we can get of it the better. Conversely, lack of education is one of the worst evils. After all, education is our profession, our mission and, to a large extent, our raison d’être.

So it is not surprising that findings suggesting that education can protect against dementia were immediately greeted with enthusiasm. Here we had a tangible proof for the Latin proverb that we are learning not for the school but for life (“non scholae sed vitae discimus”). Admittedly, the results have never been as straight forward as one could wish: in some studies, the education effects were confined to specific circumstances such as rural residence or female gender and the results differed substantially from country to country [Read more…]