Friendship and peer culture in multilingual settings: An introduction

Volume 21 of Sociological Studies of Children and Youth (SSYC) is a collection of research papers that explore friendships and peer culture among children and young people who are users and learners of multiple languages. Across the world, rising migration and globalization has meant an increase in the linguistic and cultural diversity of populations (Fielding, 2015). Internationally, there are more people who speak two or more languages than there are monolingual people (McLeod, 2014; Romaine, 2013). As well, the importance of maintaining indigenous languages and dialects has been the focus of government policy in some countries (Hopf, McLeod & McDonagh; Te Maihāroa; this volume). This collection presents ten international investigations of how children and young people make friends in settings marked by linguistic diversity, including preschool, school, neighbourhood spaces or home-stay settings.