#bilingualism

#bilingualism

Throughout many immigrant experiences, stories collected from family members can be a starting point for migrants. The memories gleaned from parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles-who crossed dozens of borders at great risk and with immense pain-can settle into the consciousness of new host communities for decades. For the migrants, these stories and memories represent the first step into a new world and contain lifelines with the potential and promise to build new, resilient identities and a sense of belonging in often hostile environments.

This was my great-grandfather Wilhelm's city, the place he'd left more than a century earlier to migrate to Mexico. I was presenting research on the very phenomenon his migration had set in motion. Wilhelm adapted quickly to San Luis Potosí. He learned Spanish, raising five children in a household that was neither fully German nor fully Mexican. He never taught his children German. The language was gone within a generation. But three generations later, my own children recovered it through deliberate immersion during my research fellowships in Germany,

Bilingualism is often seen only as a practical skill for communication, but research in educational psychology shows it is far more. It fuels children's learning capacity, social development, and emotional growth, allowing them to see the world through multiple perspectives (Antoniou, Pliatsikas, & Schroeder, 2023). One of the most powerful benefits of bilingualism is its impact on higher-order thinking skills. Researchers call this the executive function advantage, the set of mental processes that support self-control, flexible thinking, and working memory.

The common storyline is compelling: Bilingual children are "smarter," more adaptable, and very likely to succeed in life. Cognitive scientists have even coined the term "bilingual advantage," claiming that constant language switching strengthens the brain's executive functions, a set of skills we use for planning, self-control, and problem-solving. There is truth here. Many studies show that bilingual children outperform their monolingual peers in certain tasks-specifically in task-switching, attentional control, and cognitive flexibility.

The investigative journalist Diana Salinas referred to her craft as la filigrana, the filigree. I wouldn't have used the term in that context, and yet it struck me as perfect to describe the intricate, careful work that investigative reporting requires.

As an English-speaking parent in Germany, I know I'm in a relatively privileged position compared with friends whose native languages range from Swedish to Hebrew to Swahili, but it's still far from a straightforward process.