Seminar
Living arrangements of immigrants' descendants in Europe

Roberto Impicciatore (Università di Bologna)

15 February 2016
Room A, h. 13.00-14.30
Graduate School in Social and Political Sciences
Via Pace 10, Milan

In the European Union area, the presence of immigrant descendants is reshaping European societies. It represents a challenging issue for all the multicultural and multidimensional European societies as they occupy a socio-cultural middle ground between the mainstream culture in the country of origin and that in the country of arrival. 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. While family dynamics and patterns among immigrants and ethnic minorities were under-researched topics for many years, recently there has been a growing interest in this field of study. Nevertheless, the literature on the living arrangements for descendants of immigrants living in the Southern European countries is not wide developed. In the first 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. A specific effort is made in order to highlight the peculiarities of the Southern Mediterranean countries, i.e. Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece.

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 second 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.

Short background readings 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

This seminar is part of the ResFron ESLS Cycle of seminars - 2016 Edition