Roberto Impicciatore - Università di Bologna
Abstract
Immigrant descendants are reshaping European societies. They occupy a socio-cultural middle ground between the mainstream culture in the country of destination and the cultural features inherited by their immigrant parents. In this sense, they represent a challenging issue for all the multicultural and multidimensional European societies. Following an established line of research in North America, many studies in Europe have been devoted to the educational outcomes and social mobility pathways of second generation immigrants. Conversely, family dynamics and patterns among immigrants and ethnic minorities were under-researched topics for many years. More recently, there has been a growing interest in this field of study, in particular in the more traditional area of destination whereas research descendants of immigrants living in the Southern European countries remains not well developed.
From a methodological point of view, the analysis of the patterns experienced by the children of immigrants, i.e. individuals born and raised in the country of arrival, but influenced by a different cultural background, may help disentangle the role of factors that are strongly endogenous, such as the welfare regime and cultural factors transmitted from parents to children. In the first part of the seminar, I’ll focus on Italian second-generation immigrants in France and their patterns in the transition to adulthood. Results suggest that the lack of convergence between Mediterranean and North-Western European countries in the patterns of transition to adulthood may also be explained by persistent cultural differences.
In the second part of the seminar I will provide a description of the living arrangements of children of immigrants in ten EU receiving countries aiming to highlight elements of disparities/similarities by areas of origin, generation of migration and areas of destination. Main results show that living arrangements among children of immigrants are strongly influenced by the context where they live. In particular, we found dissimilar outcomes for descendants with the same origin but living in the Mediterranean area compared to those living in the more traditional destination areas in Europe.
Short reading list
Impicciatore R. 2015 The Transition to Adulthood of the Italian Second Generation in France, European journal of population 31(5): 529 – 560.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10680-015-9354-0
Cangiano A., Impicciatore R. 2015 Migrant entry channels and family-related migratory patterns in Europe: a theoretical and empirical investigation FIERI Working papers http://fieri.it/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Cangiano-Impicciatore-WP-FIERI-final.pdf
Kulu H., González-Ferrer A. 2014 Family dynamics among immigrants and their descendants in Europe: Current research and opportunities European journal of population 30(4): 411-435 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10680-014-9322-0
Contact person
Giuseppe Cavaliere e Alessandra Luati