The book “Remigration in the adolescence. The return of Spanish young second generation emigrants: sociolinguistic, psychological and social-labour aspects”, written by professor Karin Vilar Sánchez, of the Department of English and German Studies and published by the Universidad de Granada, is an essay in which a detailed and wide survey releases the personal and school situation of the young emigrants back in Spain in their host countries, their situation in Spain immediately after they arrive and their personal and labour situation at the moment of the survey. The work also analyses the existence of causal relations among different variables, such as social support or rejection to bilingualism and biculturalism and their later professional development.
Karin Vilar says that many Spanish emigrants in the north of Europe decide to come back to Spain when their children reach the “critical age”, this is, when adolescents start to extricate themselves from the family core, tending more and more towards the society around them and, above all, towards their own generational group.
The book reveals the difficulties of emigrant adolescents when they return to their country as regards school, linguistic, social and cultural adaptation.
A work team coordinated by Professor Karin Vilar did 100 personal interviews for the study to individuals that had returned to Spain 10 years ago, when they were between 10 and 14 years old. 37 of these interviews were done in Granada and the rest in different places of the province. The questionnaire proposed 180 questions about their personal data, their family situation, their friends, their host country, their school, their return to Spain, their situation in Spain and their spare time, at the time as they were asked about their degree of satisfaction in different social, cultural, school and professional aspects.
65 per cent of the interviewed affirms that, once they have definitely returned, Spain was not as they had imagined it. According to the author, “44 per cent found it completely different, but worse; 16 per cent thought it was completely different, but better; whereas 5 per cent thought it was only partially different to what they had imagined.”
Karin Vilar Sánchez maintains that “if our society wants equal opportunities for everybody, in a situation of linguistic y social maladjustment of the Spanish citizens (as in the case of our informants) or people from other countries, it is essential for the Administration to offer support for the linguistic and social integration of these persons.”
Further information: Prof Karin Vilar Sánchez
Department of English and German Studies
Universidad de Granada
Phone numbers: 958 243475. E-mail: kvilars@ugr.es
