A deaf child of migrant parents in London or Berlin may be navigating three languages at home, school, and with friends—yet researchers have almost no data on how that actually works. This project follows deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children from migrant families in the UK and Germany over one year, using sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and linguistic ethnography to map their full language repertoires. The problem is that multilingualism research has focused almost entirely on hearing, non-immigrant families with high language choice. That has produced a skewed picture of how multiple languages develop, leaving DHH migrant children—who often have limited access to spoken language, sign language, or both—invisible. Without evidence, schools and support services make decisions based on guesswork. If this research succeeds, it will produce practical guidelines for assessing and supporting language development in DHH migrant children across Europe. That could change how speech therapists, teachers, and policymakers design interventions—not just for this group, but for other marginalised multilingual populations whose language experiences have been systematically overlooked.
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This project investigates the language learning of deaf1 and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children growing up in multilingual migrant contexts and examines ways of capturing individual multilingual repertoires and repertoire development that are sensitive to the influences of these contexts.To date, multilingualism research has prioritised non-immigrant hearing households and families with high language choice and agency. The resulting knowledge base, which neglects marginalised populations, has led to a potentially skewed understanding of multiple language use, choice and development, with consequences both for the understanding of the experience of multilingualism and for practical decisions for support and education. We address these gaps by focusing on the multilingual experience of one such marginalised population: DHH children growing up in multilingual migrant contexts of the UK and Germany. We examine children’s multilingual language experience and development through an interdisciplinary lens combining sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics and linguistic ethnography to allow for a comprehensive understanding of multilingual development in these populations over a timeframe of one year. Our research agenda poses the central question: How do young deaf and hard-of-hearing migrant children experience language as a social practice, and how do contextual factors in different geographical and social spaces of migration influence their language use and repertoire? We will collect rich contextual data and then test and evaluate methodologies to analyse linguistic repertoires and communication of DHH children in migrant contexts. Information on how individual and contextual factors shape language development and use in the early stages of formal education will inform the development of a research framework that is sufficiently nuanced to capture linguistic repertoires in this and other underrepresented groups. The transnational focus, leveraging Britain’s established institutional support for multilingual children and Germany’s recent high migration, will result in (1) an analysis and explanation of the contexts of language development for DHH migrant children, (2) the expansion of scientific knowledge on multilingual linguistic repertoires in diverse contexts, (3) the development of informed guidelines for researching, assessing and explaining language use and development in marginalised communities, and (4) the development of practical guidelines for sustainable linguistic support for DHH migrant children across Europe, contributing to informed policy development. The sustainability of these outcomes will be facilitated by a participatory approach involving children, families, support networks, and educational institutions, as well as the inclusion of DHH and hearing researchers and educators in project design, data analysis and dissemination.
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