Dynamics in intention to stay and changes in language proficiency of recent migrants in the Netherlands

This study focuses on consequences of changes in intention to stay for Dutch language proficiency of recent migrants. It is anticipated that migrants who decide at a later instance to stay longer in the Netherlands have made less language investments and therefore have a lower proficiency than migrants who decided to stay longer or permanently at an earlier stage. Hypotheses are tested using Dutch panel data from the data set ‘Causes and Consequences of Social and Cultural Integration Processes among recent migrants.’ In this survey, migrants have been interviewed twice in the first years after migration to the Netherlands. Results provide that migrants who maintain a temporary intention and migrants who intend to circulate between country of origin and The Netherlands experience the smallest improvement and have the worst command of Dutch at the second wave. Changing a temporary intention to stay into a circular one improves the command of the Dutch language the most, whilst changing a temporary intention into a permanent one also strongly increases second language proficiency. Migrants changing a temporary intention into a permanent one do not differ in their language proficiency at wave 2 and experienced change herein from migrants maintaining a longer or permanent perspective.