Seminarium LabFam online „Family and Employment Trajectories among Immigrants and Their Descendants in Europe” [20.02.2024]

Podczas najbliższego seminarium Labfam prof. Hill Kulu (University of St Andrews) przedstawi badanie „Family and Employment Trajectories among Immigrants and Their Descendants in Europe”.

Seminarium odbędzie się 20 lutego br. o godz. 13:00 za pośrednictwem platformy Zoom i będzie prowadzone w języku angielskim.

Aby wziąć udział w wydarzeniu należy dokonać rejestracji na stronie: https://labfam.uw.edu.pl/seminars/family-and-employment-trajectories-among-immigrants-and-their-descendants-in-europe/

Serdecznie zapraszamy!

Abstrakt:

Over the past decades, European countries have witnessed increasing immigration and ethnic heterogeneity of their populations. This presentation gives an overview of the results of the MigrantLife project (https://migrantlife.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/). The focus is on family and employment trajectories among immigrants and their descendants in the UK, France, Germany and Sweden. Our research supports significant heterogeneity in family trajectories among immigrants and their descendants in Europe.

This heterogeneity is reduced among the descendants of immigrants, although some patterns observed for immigrants persist among the descendants’ groups (e.g. preference for marriage), whereas others have almost vanished (e.g. large families). The results show that migrant background is strongly associated with partnership patterns, whereas the destination country context significantly influences childbearing behaviour. This suggests that while cultural-normative factors are important in shaping partnership behaviour of immigrants and their descendants, structural-economic factors may play a more important role in fertility decisions.

The study of employment trajectories shows that most immigrant men are in education or in full-time employment after arrival, whereas many women stay inactive, especially among family migrants.

Although the differences are reduced among the descendants of immigrants, employment levels are low for women of some minority groups. Importantly, the gender differences are larger for immigrants and their descendants than for the native population (with two native-born parents).

The results suggest the lack of opportunities for migrant and minority women with children, although cultural preferences may also explain low employment levels among some groups. We discuss the results in the light of competing theories of immigrant and ethnic minority integration: the classical theory of assimilation vs the segmented assimilation theory.