“Britain has never made me feel like my home”: raciolinguistic ideologies and heritage language identity among young people with Chinese heritage in the UK

Abstract

This study amplifies the underrepresented voices of multilingual young people with Chinese heritage in the UK, addressing a critical gap in heritage language (HL) research by centring race and racism. Drawing on raciolinguistics and Asian Critical Race Theory (AsianCrit), it offers a novel conceptual framework for understanding HL development as a racialised process among Chinese HL speakers. The analysis is based on 115 identity narratives and 32 interviews with UK-based young people aged 11–18, collected through a larger participatory research project co-constructed with young co-researchers. The findings show that growing up multilingual with a heritage background is deeply entangled with processes of racialisation. Participants described how their language practices were subject to mockery, essentialist assumptions, and pressures to assimilate into monolingual Whiteness, revealing Chinese language and heritage as sites not only of scrutiny, marginalisation, and identity negotiation, but also of resistance and voice. By bringing raciolinguistics and AsianCrit into dialogue, the study advances theoretical understandings of HL identities and trajectories as being shaped by intersecting structures of linguistic and racial injustice. It concludes by calling for more critical and anti-racist approaches across mainstream and HL education, with implications for pedagogy and practice.