Social capital, intergenerational transmission and intercultural contact in immigrant families

The impact of intergenerational transmission processes on the intercultural contact and ethnic identification of second generation adolescents is stud ied in five different groups of migrant families: Italian, Greek, and Turki sh work migrants, German repatriates from Russia, and Jewish immigrants fro m Russia to Israel. In each group, 400 dyads of parents and adolescents wit h the same sex Were interviewed with a standardized questionnaire in the la nguage of origin or of the receiving society. Four possible outcomes of int ercultural contact are distinguished: integration, assimilation, segregatio n, and marginalization. An explanatory model is proposed that relates these possible outcomes systematically to the availability of social and cultura l capital in migrant families and to intergenerational transmission process es. The empirical analysis compares measurement for ethnic identification a nd network characteristics for the parent and the child generation as an in dication,of intergenerational transmission. It reveals considerable variabi lity between migrant groups which can not be explained by classical assimil ation theory and thus demonstrate the adequacy of the suggested model.