CHILD AGENCY IN FAMILY LANGUAGE POLICY: MULTILINGUAL FAMILIES IN KAZAKHSTAN

Abstract

Although research on family language policy (FLP) has gained prominence in multilingual contexts, much of it has focused on parental views, often neglecting children’s perspectives and influence. Recent studies argue that children are not passive recipients of language decisions but active participants who tend to negotiate established norms (Fogle & King, 2018; Palviainen, 2020). Despite these developments, little attention has been paid to child agency in non-Western contexts, including post-Soviet Kazakhstan – a unique multilingual landscape with a complex interplay of languages within families. This study explores how children in multilingual families in Kazakhstan describe their linguistic repertoires and exercise agency, by negotiating parents’ language decisions, shaping linguistic norms within the family, and influencing family language dynamics. Using a qualitative multiple case study design, the study draws on interviews and language portrait activities with children and parents from three Kazakh-Russian speaking multilingual families from Astana. Data were analyzed using Smith-Christmas’s (2020) multidimensional framework of child agency in FLP, as adapted by Ezin (2025). Findings revealed that children exercised agency along a continuum from active to silent forms – asserting language preferences, resisting or negotiating parental expectations, engaging in translanguaging, or silently maintaining language norms through acquiescence and accretion. Over time, their practices contributed to noticeable shifts in family language practices, often prompted by external influences like schooling and media. In addition, through their language portraits, children represented their linguistic repertoires as fluid, embodied, and emotionally grounded, using body metaphors and color symbolism to visually narrate their multilingual identities and experiences. The research contributes to a growing body of literature that offers insight into how child agency manifests in diverse multilingual contexts. By foregrounding children’s voices, the study challenges top-down assumptions about language policy and highlights the need for more child-centered approaches in language policy research and practice.