Intergenerational relations and the sense of belonging in the context of migration – What do second generation young adults learn from their first generation parents (and vice versa)?

Migration is a life transition that entails changes in social and emotional belonging, and an important developmental task for migrants is the establishment of bonds in the receiving country. While first generation immigrants have been enculturated in the culture of origin before being confronted with the host culture, their children grow up in two or multiple different value systems and cultures during their formative years. How does this so-called second-generation experience their cultural belonging and how are their identity constructions related to their parents’? This was a main topic of the FNR-funded IRMA project which compared first and second generations from Portuguese migrant families in the Luxembourgish multicultural context with regard to their cultural identity, intergenerational relations and transmission processes. The sample of the present study consists of family dyads resp. Triads comprising n = 70 PT mothers and n = 65 PT fathers over the age of 50 who arrived about 30 years ago to Luxembourg, together with n = 72 PT young adults (mean age M = 28. 2, SD = 7. 9; 61. 1% female) already born or grown up in Luxembourg. By use of a newly developed measure of cultural attachment to Luxembourg and Portugal, we examine the intergenerational continuity in the sense of cultural belonging and identify mediators in the transmission process such as relationship quality and the motivation to transmit or accept parental values. Results will be discussed with reference to an integrative model on intergenerational relations in the light of age and migration experiences.