Transnational families in the digital diaspora; Settlers and sojourners raising multilingual children in Sweden and New Zealand

New Zealand and Sweden have often been compared, and they have much in common. Both are sparsely populated, relatively wealthy countries, and both have large migrant populations who have come to the country for various reasons. Beneath the surface, however, there are fundamental differences in terms of the two countries' migration and language policies and practices which in turn have far-reaching impact on the language beliefs and practices of migrant parents and those teachers and other professionals who work with the children of migrants.

This paper describes and attempts to explain some of the factors affecting the intergenerational transmission of minority languages in Sweden and New Zealand. Whether the migrants are settlers who plan to make the new country their home for the foreseeable future or sojourners who plan to move back or move on after a period, if one or both parents speaks a language other than the majority language, they have the possibility of raising their children as speakers of more than one language. The tension between the social and educational contexts in which the family currently lives and in which they previously lived will make intergenerational transmission of the minority language easier or more difficult according to a range of variables that will be explored in this paper, with particular attention paid to the role of the digital diaspora.