‘Persian is not just a language, it is our roots’: family language policy among Iranian immigrants in Germany from an ecological perspective

This study examines family language policy (FLP) among Iranian immigrant families in Germany, exploring how Persian heritage language maintenance is negotiated within a non-Anglophone migration context. Drawing on questionnaire data and semi-structured interviews with 26 first-generation Iranian parents residing in Berlin, Hamburg, and Frankfurt, the study investigates parental language ideologies, everyday language practices, and challenges surrounding intergenerational transmission of Persian. The findings demonstrate that parents strongly associate Persian with identity, cultural continuity, emotional belonging, and responsibility towards future generations. Persian maintenance extends beyond communication and functions as a symbolic resource through which families sustain intergenerational continuity under migration. The study further shows that heritage language maintenance emerges through continuous negotiation involving parental efforts, children’s agency, German-dominant schooling, peer interaction, and transnational family ties. Rather than operating as a fixed parental project, family language policy appears as a dynamic ecological process shaped by multiple interacting social forces. By extending FLP research beyond predominantly Anglophone contexts, the study highlights the complex interplay of ideology, agency, affect, and wider sociolinguistic conditions in heritage language maintenance within migrant family life.