The Bilingual Advantage Language, Literacy and the US Labor Market

The Bilingual Advantage draws together researchers from education, economics, sociology, anthropology and linguistics to examine the economic and employment benefits of bilingualism in the US labor market, countering past research that shows no such benefits exist. Collectively, the authors draw on novel methodological approaches and new data to examine the economics of bilingualism for the new generation of bilinguals entering a digital-age globalized workforce. The authors also pay considerable attention to how to best capture measures of bilingualism and biliteracy, given the constraints of most existing datasets.

Rebecca M. Callahan is Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Texas, Austin, where she is a faculty affiliate of the Population Research Center. Her primary research interests center on the academic preparation of bilingual immigrant adolescents as they transition from high school into young adulthood.Patricia C. Gándara is Research Professor of Education in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. She is co-director of the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA, and a commissioner on President Obama's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. Her research focuses on language policy and racial equity.