LANGUAGE CHOICE AMONG IMMIGRANTS IN A MULTILINGUAL DESTINATION

This paper analyzes the choice of dominant destination language spoken by immigrants in a multi-lingual destination. The empirical analysis is performed for Canada. Immigrants tend to gravitate to the official language that is closer to their mother tongue, that predominates in t heir region of residence and that has the broader labor market or econ omy. Bilingualism in the two official languages increases with the lev el of education in both Quebec and English Canada. French-only speaker s among immigrants in Quebec tend to come from Romance language countr ies, have low levels of schooling, are recent arrivals and immigrated at an older age.