Forgetting your mother tongue: the effect of early separation on the socioeconomic position

Abstract

Purpose

During Second World War 48,628 Finnish children were evacuated to Sweden and temporarily placed in foster care. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships between the parental socioeconomic position (SEP), evacuation, language acquisition, and education and to analyze how these are related to SEP in separated compared to non-separated in later life.

Design/methodology/approach

The sample consists of 749 separated and 1,535 non-separated persons. Pre-evacuation data on the separated were collected from the archives. The non-separated were matched for age, gender, place of birth, and mother tongue Finnish/Swedish. Data from both cohorts were collected by a postal questionnaire in autumn 2005. Stratified hierarchical regression analysis was used to predict SEP.

Findings

The results show that the SEP and education of those Finnish-speaking evacuees who had lost their mother tongue when returning home were lower compared to the Finnish-speaking non-evacuees. On the contrary, the SEP of the Swedish-speaking evacuees was higher than of the Swedish-speaking non-evacuees.

Research limitations/implications

Selection bias and attrition bias is a concern when interpreting the results.

Practical implications

The study shows the importance of supporting the mother tongue of temporary migrants while staying in the host country and of taking actions for language policy planning when they return back home.

Originality/value

This study uses data on a large child evacuation operation during Second World War to study how unaccompanied evacuation and loss of mother tongue affect SEP in later life. To the knowledge no such study has been conducted.

Citation

Heilala, C., Komulainen, E. and Santavirta, N. (2016), "Forgetting your mother tongue: the effect of early separation on the socioeconomic position", International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care, Vol. 12 No. 2, pp. 120-132. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMHSC-10-2013-0038