The impact of intergenerational transmission processes on the intercultural contact and ethnic identification of second generation adolescents is studied in five different groups of migrant families: Italian, Greek, and Turkish work migrants, German repatriates from Russia, and Jewish immigrants from Russia to Israel. In each group, 400 dyads of parents and adolescents with the same sex were interviewed with a standardized questionnaire in the language of origin or of the receiving society. Four possible outcomes of intercultural contact are distinguished: integration, assimilation, segregation, and marginalization. An explanatory model is proposed that relates these possible outcomes systematically to the availability of social and cultural capital in migrant families and to intergenerational transmission processes. The empirical analysis compares measurement for ethnic identification and network characteristics for the parent and the child generation as an indication of intergenerational transmission. It reveals considerable variability between migrant groups which can not be explained by classical assimilation theory and thus demonstrate the adequacy of the suggested model.

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empiricism Turkey (republic) Germany Review Behavior Greece Israel cultural factor adaptation ethnology society race difference family study integration Russian Federation human migration