Language and immigration in the educational and social context

Language and immigration in the educational and social context. In the context of International migrations, the knowledge of the language is one of the barriers that the newcomer and his descendants have to face to gain a full integration in the host society. In Spain, where immigration is relatively recent, the political and academic attention to migration is still focused on the management of flows rather than integration. Regarding the cultural aspect of integration, it would be easy to suppose that Latin-American immigrants are better placed than immigrants from other origins to gain a faster and fuller integration, given the cultural proximity and the sharing of the same language. This would be a major difference to what has happened in the USA with the Latino or Hispanic communities. Nevertheless, a comparison with other countries suggests that, even if sharing the language is a considerable advantage, this is not the only or even the main aspect that future policies of integration will have to tackle.