Family language policy (FLP) is an established concept in socio­linguistic studies on language acquisition. According to this approach, child language learning is fundamentally shaped by parental language policies which include (i) language prac­tices, i.e. the actual choices of parents regarding the languages they speak to their children; (ii) language ideology, i.e. values, beliefs and attitudes towards languages and their use; (iii) language management, i.e. the actual efforts of the parents to enhance children's language learning. Most studies on FLP were conducted in nuclear families and in immigration settings, i.e. in families where another language than the dominant majority language is spoken (Bose et al. 2023).

Our paper fills a gap by adopting a comparative perspective that adds diachronic depth to the theoretical study on FLP. We conducted interviews in 30 Russian-speaking families in Germany who consist of three different generations: Grandparents represent the first generation who immigrated as adults from the Soviet Union to Germany in the late 1980ies. Their children represent the second (or, more precisely, 1.5 generation) because they were already adolescents when they immigrated with their parents. Now they are raising their own children, who represent the “real” second generation as they were born already in the host country Germany. Our aim is to investigate (a) how FLPs changed over the course of the three generations and (b) how (and why) FLP of the parents of each generation was shaped by their experience of FLP of the preceding generation. We adopt a qualitative and comparative approach in analyzing the data. A preliminary analysis of the first interviews showed that FLP in subsequent generations is heavily influenced by models of FLP adopted by the preceding generation, and this influence goes both ways (copying of previous FLP as well as deliberate rejection of experienced FLP).