An Approach to Studying the Sociolinguistic Integration of Romanian Immigrants Residing in the Community of Madrid

Abstract

Grounded in different theoretical approaches of sociolinguistics, this study aims to examine the sociolinguistic integration process of the Romanian immigrant population that resides in Madrid. Semi-guided interviews are carried out with Romanian immigrants in order to obtain qualitative information regarding different aspects of the sociolinguistic integration of the immigrant population; additionally, questionnaires are administered to the same informants, with the objective of obtaining quantitative information on attitudes. Furthermore, questionnaires on attitudes were administered to 1534 informants of Spanish origin who reside in Madrid to analyze their attitudes with regard to the Romanian immigrant population living in Madrid. The analysis performed thus far indicates that the Romanian informants seem to have a good attitude toward the speech of Madrid and, in general, seem highly predisposed to integrating into their host community. The most significant conclusions drawn from the preliminary phase of analysis presented here are that although the Romanian informants perceive their integration positively, the host community does not perceive it in the same way.

1. Introduction1

1.1. Why Study the Romanian Community?

According to data from the Immigration Observatory of the Community of Madrid (2018), the Romanian community is the largest migrant group in the Community of Madrid, as can be seen in Figure 1. Specifically, 21.67% of the foreign population residing in the Community of Madrid is of Romanian origin. These data demonstrate the importance of studying this migrant community, as it can be assumed that there will be greater contact between the host community2 and this population than other nationalities and also because this group will have a strong presence in different spheres of Madrid society.

1.2. Context of the Research

This study is part of the research project The Migrant Population of the Community of Madrid: Multidisciplinary Study and Tools for Sociolinguistic Integration (IN.MIGRA2-CM) and, more specifically, its subgroup UAH-HISPALIN at the University of Alcalá. This study will examine the sociolinguistic integration process of the Romanian immigrant population living in Madrid, on the basis of different theoretical approaches from sociolinguistics, such as cognitive sociolinguistics, variationist linguistics, different theories regarding language attitudes, and so forth. In this sense, it is necessary to emphasize that, in spite of the fact that all the aforementioned theoretical approaches will be used for the realization of this study, for the moment, studies on linguistic contact have been used especially.

It is expected that the results of the project will significantly enrich research into the sociocultural characteristics of the migrant population living in the Community of Madrid and, therefore, may be of great use in studying phenomena of language contact.

The general objective of this study is to understand and analyze the sociolinguistic integration process of the Romanian immigrant population living in the Community of Madrid, both from the immigrants’ perspective (Romanians) and from the perspective of the host community (madrileños).

Additionally, several specific objectives are established under this general objective, such as: contribute to the IN.MIGRA2-CM project by adding a series of semi-guided interviews and questionnaires on language attitudes to the speech corpus; create an independent speech corpus composed of semi-guided interviews with Romanian immigrants living in different areas of the Community of Madrid, including the transcription and coding of the data obtained, as well as organizing the results. Other objectives include: qualitatively analyze different aspects of the sociolinguistic integration (language attitudes, perception, opinion of the language as it relates to the general integration process, communication accommodation) of the Romanian population living in Madrid; quantitatively analyze certain dependent variables that are important to the study; and determine the attitudes of informants from the host community.

1.3. Theoretical Framework

One can speak of sociolinguistic integration when language is seen as a factor determining integration or rejection (Moreno Fernández 2013). Similarly, it should be remembered that sociolinguistic integration “is social and involves a process of adaptation that is influenced by several factors” (Moreno Fernández 2013, p. 73), such as the linguistic repertoire of migrants and host communities, the social and linguistic consequences of language contact, and the way social coexistence is organized in accordance with the use of languages.

Integration is a social issue; however, it unfolds at an individual level and therefore the individuals become the bearers of the conflicts inherent to migration, such as issues of identity, learning, accommodation, or social relations (Moreno Fernández 2013). Thus, the best approach for this research was determined to be one with an interdisciplinary perspective, considering different theories from sociolinguistics, linguistics, psychology, and sociology, so as to provide a framework capable of analyzing the different aspects involved in the integration process.

Social integration is a complex, dynamic process carried out by individuals or societies “through which different groups come to share certain values and establish interdependent socioeconomic relationships” (Paredes García and Sancho Pascual 2018, p. 42).

According to the perspective of the sociology of migration, the linguistic dimension is a key variable of the many that are involved in the migrant population’s adaptation process (Moreno Fernández 2009). Social integration must be approached by taking into account different aspects related to the coexistence of languages in the host community and the integration process must be explained in relation to language use (Moreno Fernández 2013). However, social integration—and, consequently, sociolinguistics—is a bidirectional process that affects both the migrant population and the host community (Berry 2001; Moreno Fernández 2009). Thus, the immigrant group’s real possibilities of integration are going to be directly conditioned by the attitudes and behaviors of the receiving community (Berry 2001). Likewise, the hypothesis is that integration will be less difficult the closer the languages in contact and the less complex the host community (Moreno Fernández 2009). In the specific case that this research occupies, and following the idea of the aforementioned author, Romanians should find fewer difficulties in environmental learning of Spanish, since the linguistic distance between the languages is not very large (their L1 is a Romance language, the same as for Spanish).

Berry (2001) proposes an acculturation model (see Miras Páez and Sancho Pascual 2017) for more on the concept of acculturation) based on the fact that integration is a mutual process that affects two groups, and therefore the cultural changes that occur in one group will have an impact on both. As explained by Miras Páez and Sancho Pascual (2017), Berry’s model is based on two independent attitudinal dimensions of acculturation; one refers to the degree to which the groups value and wish to maintain their cultural identity, and the other refers to the degree to which they value and seek relationships with other group(s). These dimensions are found in both the dominant and subordinate group, and their combination gives rise to different attitudinal and/or behavioral spaces in which the groups can move. Continuing with Berry’s model (2001), the author argues that, from the point of view of the immigrant groups, integration will occur when there is a desire to relate with the other group and, at the same time, an intention to maintain one’s own cultural identity. Assimilation will occur when the individual or group seeks contact with the other groups and does not wish to maintain the cultural values of the in-group. Separation will occur if the immigrants value their own culture but do not intend to interact with others. Finally, marginalization will occur if the attitudes or behavior in terms of both dimensions are negative. As can be imagined, the most tolerant and enriching option is integration; however, as Berry (2001) indicates, even if the subordinate group has a great desire to integrate, this will only be possible if the dominant group has an integrating attitude.

Thus, language attitudes are one of the most important aspects of this study, given that, as asserted by García Marcos (2015), speakers and social groups judge languages and varieties that share the same social space. Furthermore, said judgments are shown not only through positive or negative opinions, but can also be inferred through actions and behaviors. In this sense, another hypothesis that is part of the study is that if the immigrant has a favorable attitude toward the language and the dialectal variety of the receiving society, the process is facilitated (Moreno Fernández 2009).

Additionally, the importance of the concept of identity will be considered. Languages not only convey purely linguistic meanings (Moreno Fernández 1998); rather, the language spoken by an individual is part of their identity as a subject and as a member of a social group (Sancho Pascual 2013a). This fact reinforces the importance of studying identity in the linguistics of migration, as identity will, to a greater or lesser extent, have an impact on immigrants’ integration process.

1.4. Previous Studies

Now, to focus on the subject of the study and to offer a brief summary regarding research on linguistic issues related to Romanian immigrants, the work by Sanz Huéscar (2008), Roesler (2011), Muñoz Carrobles (2013), and Buzilă (2016) is of particular interest.

Sanz Huéscar (2008) studied the influence of different extralinguistic elements of a social nature on the configuration and adoption of language attitudes. Thus, this research—which was based on the study of the Romanian immigrant population living in Alcalá de Henares—focused on contributing knowledge that would help understand the social integration process of immigrants in host communities from a sociolinguistic perspective and, more specifically, understand the language attitudes adopted by Romanian immigrants living in the city of Alcalá, as a determining element of this group’s integration into the host community. Of particular note in the findings of this research is the idea “that the language attitudes adopted by Romanian immigrants reveal the complex interrelation between the competence, value and instrumental dimensions of language attitudes and the person’s other social and psychosocial systems” (Sanz Huéscar 2008, p. 354). The author argues that as a result of this interrelation, Romanian immigrants living in Alcalá have adopted positive language attitudes and that these positive attitudes are due mainly to the value dimension.

The study carried out by Roesler (2011) aimed to research the Spanish spoken by Romanian immigrants in Castellón de la Plana. To analyze the immigrants’ Spanish competency, the author carried out 30 interviews in 2008 with informants who had immigrated to Spain between 1995 and 2007. This research was focused on studying the influence of the immigrants’ native language on Spanish, as well as the influence of the intensity of contact with Spanish speakers and the geographic variety of Spanish they first entered into contact with. According to Roesler (2011), these seem to be important factors that affect the specific characteristics of the Spanish spoken by Romanians.

Another study of note was carried out by Muñoz Carrobles (2013), who undertook to analyze the synchronous situation of language contact between Romanian and Spanish within the Romanian community established in Madrid. Some of the conclusions more emphasized by this author in his study are that, on the one hand, the economic factor is a heavy reason for the Romanians to stabilize in Madrid. On the other hand, this author points out that, of the four strategies framed within Berry’s model (2001), in the Romanian community of Madrid, mainly assimilation and integration take place. Muñoz Carrobles (2013, p. 384) reports that “the Romanian community of Madrid tries to make an effort to adapt to the culture of the host society”. Now, on the linguistic level, this author points out that the use of the Romanian language due to the loss of areas of communication could be the starting point of a future process of linguistic substitution. Muñoz Carrobles (2013) details that a diglossic scenario is taking place in Madrid, which could negatively affect the language with a lower status (the Romanian language).

Another contribution to the topic of this study was the work done by Buzilă (2016), who performed a sociolinguistic analysis of how Romanian immigrants living in Spain speak. This author argues that, at least from a quantitative perspective, there is not a new linguistic code spoken by this migrant group, which some authors have coined rumañol. This author explains in his study that the variables such as sex, training level, and residence time in Spain do not influence the amount of interference of the Romanian language in the Spanish language. However, they do seem to influence in some way the place of origin of the Romanians and the place of residence. In addition, the author states that the two factors that most influence the interference of the Romanian language into Spanish are age and bilingualism.

2. Methods

This section provides a brief explanation of the methodology followed in this study. It should also be noted that the results presented below in this article are in a first phase of analysis and therefore are not conclusive.

It should be underlined that the selection of the sample, data collection, and the organization of interviews and questionnaires were based on the precepts established by the IN.MIGRA2-CM project; thus, the same interview and questionnaire structure used in said project were applied here. This is because it was considered necessary to employ a single data collection method so as to be able to compare the results of this study to others carried out in parallel by the different members of the IN.MIGRA2-CM project; in this manner, it will be possible to carry out a comprehensive study on the sociolinguistic integration of different migrant groups living in the Community of Madrid in the future.

2.1. Data Collection

In this study, data were always collected from the Romanian informants directly and in person (i.e., the researcher was responsible for recording the interviews and administering the questionnaires). Semi-guided interviews were carried out with Romanian immigrants in order to obtain qualitative information regarding different aspects involved in the sociolinguistic integration of the immigrant population, as well as to extract the necessary data to compare them with the information obtained from the qualitative analysis of language attitudes. Additionally, linguistic information can be extracted from these interviews, which could be used to analyze errors in different linguistic aspects that are important to consider when determining the level of integration of the Romanian immigrants living in Madrid. Moreover, using the interviews, it will be determined whether the attitudes the informants project correspond to their linguistic usage (this objective cannot be carried out until all the interviews are carried out). To that end, questionnaires will be administered to the same informants with the objective of obtaining quantitative information on attitudes.

The questionnaire administered to the Romanian population, as mentioned above, was the same used in the IN.MIGRA2-CM project (Paredes García and Sancho Pascual 2018). It consists of different issues related to attitudes and is divided into three parts: (1) a section that provides information on the informant’s contact with both the host community as well as their compatriots (whether in Madrid or their countries of origin) and immigrants of other nationalities; (2) an attitude questionnaire comprising 32 statements for which the respondent must indicate to what extent they agree or disagree on a four-point Likert scale that ranges from “Strongly disagree” to “Strongly agree”. These items are organized into eight topical blocks that allow for an understanding of the different components of attitude (cognitive, affective, and conative) and the possible factors behind said attitudes; and (3) the questionnaire ends with a question that seeks the respondent’s opinion of the speech of Madrid as compared to their own through a six-point semantic differential scale.

The questionnaire administered to the host community also consists of three different parts: (1) questions related to their contact with the Romanian population; (2) an attitude questionnaire comprising 29 statements, following the same structure as the questionnaire applied to the Romanian immigrants; and (3) a final question on what madrileños understand by integration.

Thus far, of the 72 informants planned for the study, a total of 48 Romanian informants were interviewed already (the sample will be described in further detail below) between October 2016 and November 2018 through various methods of contact (the researcher visited different associations, Orthodox churches, closed social networks where Romanians living in Madrid come together, local stores with Romanian products, etc.).

The questionnaire on the attitudes of informants of Spanish origin who reside in Madrid was administered in order to analyze their attitudes with regard to the Romanian immigrant population living in Madrid. In this case, the questionnaires were administered online by disseminating them through social networks. Responses that did not meet the previously established requirements were eliminated; these requirements were that respondents must be older than 18, be of Spanish origin, and reside in any town in the Community of Madrid. A total of 1534 questionnaires were collected from madrileño informants.

Data collection for the complete sample of informants will be carried out in three ways:

• 72 semi-structured interviews with Romanian immigrants living in different areas of Madrid (center, northwest, south, and east). The northern and western areas of Madrid had to be combined into a single area, the northwest, due to the low percentage of Romanian immigrant population living in this part of the Community of Madrid.
• 72 questionnaires on language attitudes administered to the same informants.
• Questionnaires on attitudes administered to madrileños living in Madrid.

Additionally, a prestratified sample was selected based on sex (variable divided into two groups: “men” and “women”) and on the informants’ length of residence in Spain (also divided into two groups: “more than four years residing in Spain” and “less than four years residing in Spain”), as these were considered to be determining factors.

Moreover, other poststratified variables were taken into account, such as the area of residence, social network, and whether or not the informant planned to stay in Spain, as these are possible factors that may influence the sociolinguistic integration process.

It is important to note that the link between madrileños and Romanians is only that of the place they share; there are no interpersonal relationships between the interviewees, at least not that they have been specifically sought. But for that reason, it is important to detect the attitudes of these two groups (i.e., whether the interviewees or respondents knew each other, which would surely influence the results).

2.2. Coding and Data Extraction

In order to reflect all of the results extracted from the data, a coded figure has been created that includes the informants’ profile, as well as all of the coded answers from the questionnaires administered. Subsequently, the statistics computer program SPSS was used to perform a quantitative analysis of the data and thus favor the means to perform a descriptive statistical analysis.

For the next phase of analysis, the qualitative phase, all of the interviews will be transcribed into the corpus, following the conventions of the TEI (Text Encoding Initiative), which are also the criteria followed by the PRESEEA project (Cestero et al. 2003). The transcription will be performed manually with the assistance of different computer programs, such as Transcriber. At the moment, there are a total of four transcribed interviews, so it is still too early to make an analysis in this regard.

2.3. Description of the Sample

Below are the data regarding the sample collected thus far, as can be seen in Figure 2, Figure 3, Figure 4 and Figure 5. In them, the following coding appears: sex (H = men, M = women); residence time in Spain (+4 = more than 4 years, −4 = less than 4 years). The X represents the informants interviewed in each box.

Given these data, it can be seen that the established number of Romanian informants who have been living in Spain for more than four years has been interviewed in all areas. However, the established sample of informants who have lived in Spain for less than four years has not been completed yet. Specifically, 48 of the expected 72 interviews have been carried out in total; 36 of these correspond to informants who have been living in Spain for over four years and 12 to those who have lived in Spain for less than four years. Thus, 24 interviews must still be conducted to complete the sample.

The sample has not been completed because of the great difficulty in finding Romanian informants who have been in the country for a short period of time. This difficulty is due, in large part, to the economic downturn Spain has experienced in recent years, which has caused a large number of Romanians to return to their country of origin and has also translated to a lower number of arrivals (Buzilă 2016).

Closely examining the above figures, it can be seen that the areas with the lowest number of −4 informants are the south and northwest of the Community of Madrid. This is related to the lower number of Romanian immigrants living in these areas.

3. Results

This section will present some of the most representative results from the analysis that has been carried out in the study’s first phase. It should be clarified that the results presented below have been extracted from an analysis of the SPSS statistical software, as stated above. According to the results of this program, only significant values have been selected.

3.1. Characteristics of the Sample: Reasons for Coming to Spain and Future Expectations

The data provided below come from the questionnaires applied to the informants. Specifically, they were in a multiple-choice question format where the informants had to choose the answer closest to their reality.

Figure 6 presents the results related to Romanian immigrants’ reasons for coming to Spain. As can be seen, the main reason Romanian immigrants come to Spain is to improve their economic prospects. This may be related to the socioeconomic circumstances experienced in Romania in the 1990s, when the transition to capitalism took place, triggering a series of important changes in society (Buzilă 2016). According to the author quoted, the country’s economic situation worsened considerably as the privatization process began, resulting in many lost jobs, leading to a rise of Romanian emigration to Western Europe. Consequently, salaries in Romania dropped sharply and unemployment increased; immigration was the only way out of this difficult situation for many Romanians (Buzilă 2016). Additionally, Spain’s economic situation drew many Romanian immigrants to the country, given that beginning in 2000, the country’s economic development created a large number of jobs. Moreover, a decisive factor for Romanians choosing Spain as their preferred country of immigration is the language (Buzilă 2016). This can be related to what has already been explained above about the linguistic distance between Romanian and Spanish (Moreno Fernández 2009). So, since the Romanian and Spanish languages are two nearby languages because they belong to the same linguistic family, this can be seen by migrants as a great advantage when choosing the destination country.

Figure 7 shows that the majority of Romanian informants expressed their wish to remain in Spain definitively. This result coincides with Buzilă’s findings (2016); in his study, he argues that there is a certain degree of interest in returning to Romania, but few people actually do so, and the majority return to Spain because they find it difficult to reintegrate into the Romanian job market or because they are unable to readapt to Romanian society. This author presents several reasons why the majority of Romanian immigrants decide to stay in Spain (e.g., they purchase a home in Spain, the Romanian economy is not good enough, or the Spanish economy, in spite of the recession, is better than the Romanian economy).

3.2. Attitudes of Romanian Informants toward the Speech of Madrid

As can be observed in Figure 8, the Romanian informants present fairly positive attitudes toward the variety of Spanish spoken in Madrid. This is important, as it can be assumed that this will largely favor their sociolinguistic integration process. Furthermore, it may reflect a strong desire to integrate into the host community.

3.3. The Identity Issue

As can be seen in Figure 9, a little over half of the Romanian informants surveyed stated that they would not like to maintain their way of speaking as an identifying trait. The identity issue should be taken into consideration; as Sancho Pascual (2013b) indicates, language is an important element of the identity of individuals and social groups, and therefore it can become both an element of inclusion and exclusion with regard to the host society (Sorolla Fernández, 2011, quoted in Sancho Pascual 2013b). Given these results, special emphasis should be put on a subsequent analysis of whether it is possible that there is a type of linguistic disloyalty that would favor linguistic convergence with the host community. If so, this would have a direct impact on the sociolinguistic integration of Romanian immigrants; however, it is too soon to assert this fact.

3.4. Madrileños’ View on Integration

In the question on the questionnaire asking about integration, four possible responses are provided: (1) To me, integration means immigrants retain their cultural standards of behavior, and also adopt those of Spaniards; (2) To me, integration means immigrants adopt Spaniards’ standards of behavior; (3) To me, integration means immigrants maintain the cultural standards of behavior of their country of origin and do not adopt those of Spaniards; and (4) Other. In the option “Other”, there was no response different from those already given in the other options, only nuances by the people of Madrid regarding the options given above. In spite of this, these data must be analyzed more thoroughly in the future.

Figure 10a shows that the majority of madrileño informants (almost 76%) agree with the idea of integration proposed by Berry (2001), that is, that immigrants must maintain their cultural standards of behavior, but they must also adopt those of Spaniards. The second most frequently chosen option (17.6%), although with much lower numbers than the first, is the idea of assimilation proposed by the same author, that is, that immigrants should adopt Spaniards’ standards of behavior. The idea of separation proposed by Berry (2001)—that integration consists of immigrants maintaining the standards of cultural behavior of their country of origin and not adopting those of Spaniards—is an option that is hardly chosen (0.6%). These results must be analyzed in greater depth in order to be able to understand what aspects influence these responses.

According to Figure 10b, the perception of a little more than half (53.16%) of madrileño informants is that Romanian immigrants are not fully integrated into Madrid society. While it is true that the percentage of madrileño informants that believe this is not too high (on the total population surveyed), further analysis of the aspects that may contribute to this perception in the host community is required.

These results offer a glimpse into the host community’s view of the migrant group under study, and are considered to be particularly representative given that, as mentioned above, the social (and sociolinguistic) integration process is bidirectional; therefore, the responses of the host community must be considered in order to understand how this integration process is unfolding.

3.5. Romanian Informants’ Self-Perception of Integration

Figure 11 clearly shows that Romanian informants feel very integrated into the host community. This can be related to the results in Figure 6, Figure 7, Figure 8 and Figure 9, which demonstrate the strong desire for integration into the host community of the Romanian immigrants surveyed, given their different personal characteristics and attitudes toward the speech of Madrid.

At the same time, as can be seen by comparing these results to those in Figure 10b, the perceptions of madrileños and Romanians differ in terms of Romanians’ level of integration; therefore, further analysis is required to determine what other aspects or variables influence these responses.

4. Discussion

From all the information presented above, some conclusions can be drawn in this first phase of the study.

First, according to the preliminary data, Romanian immigrants seem to show a good attitude toward the speech of Madrid—which Sanz Huéscar (2008) confirmed in her study—and they also believe that they have a high degree of integration into the host community. This could indicate that Romanian immigrants would have a strong desire to integrate into the host community, facilitating this process of integration in this regard. In addition, the identity issue is an aspect that can have an impact on the sociolinguistic integration process. In this regard, further analysis is required on the different variables that may affect this issue in order to determine to what extent identity may affect the sociolinguistic integration process of the Romanian community living in Madrid, both positively and negatively.

Second, the madrileños surveyed seem to show a relatively positive attitude toward the integration of the Romanian population; however, although the Romanian immigrants perceive their integration in Madrid very positively, it seems that the host community does not see it in the same way. These topics must also be studied carefully, taking into account the multiple variables and aspects that could influence these issues; additionally, the full sample must be collected in order to obtain complete results.

Lastly, and due to the fact that the results presented in this article are fairly general and the established sample size still has not been reached, a more exhaustive analysis of the results collected must be carried out in order to offer more realistic, objective data. For all of these reasons, the second phase of the study is expected to continue by completing data collection and, of course, by transcribing the corpus. Then, sufficient information will be obtained to offer more precise data regarding the sociolinguistic integration process of the Romanian community living in the Community of Madrid.