Volume 43 - Article 30 | Pages 889–928  

Living arrangements of adult children of immigrants in selected European countries

By Giuseppe Gabrielli, Roberto Impicciatore

Abstract

Background: The living arrangements of adult children of immigrants are shaped across Europe by both the dominant norms of mainstream society and the intergenerational transmission of values and practices.

Objective: The paper describes the heterogeneous scenario across Europe in three specific living arrangements (living with parents, in a partnership, and, among those living with a partner, being in nonmarital cohabitation) by developing a multiple-origin/multiple-destination analysis based on migratory generation and by questioning adaptation and socialization hypotheses.

Methods: The 2014 ad hoc module of the EU Labour Force Survey provides significant insights on young adults aged 20 to 34 in eight EU countries. The propensity to experience the three specific behaviors is estimated through logit models aiming at comparing southern and northwestern Europe.

Results: Adult children of immigrants mostly tend to resemble the majority groups in the different destination contexts. Nevertheless, contextual factors cannot explain the whole intra-European heterogeneity. Results are not fully consistent with the expected gradual adaptation across migratory generations, and some differences based on the area of origin persist in all destination areas, especially for the decision to experience a nonmarital cohabitation. Young adults originating from South and East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa show stronger influence of their cultural inheritance than the other groups.

Contribution: By developing comparative research on living arrangements among immigrants and their descendants, we contribute to the theoretical debate giving evidence of prevalence of the adaptation hypothesis in the exit from parental home and family formation and the dominance of a socialization effect in the type of union.

Author's Affiliation

• Giuseppe Gabrielli - Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Italy EMAIL
• Roberto Impicciatore - Università di Bologna (UNIBO), Italy EMAIL

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

The changing pattern of cohabitation: A sequence analysis approach
Volume 40 - Article 42

Motherhood of foreign women in Lombardy: Testing the effects of migration by citizenship
Volume 33 - Article 23

MAPLES: A general method for the estimation of age profiles from standard demographic surveys (with an application to fertility)
Volume 24 - Article 29

Levels of recent union formation : Six European countries compared
Volume 22 - Article 9

The impact of origin region and internal migration on Italian fertility
Volume 17 - Article 24

Most recent similar articles in Demographic Research

The intergenerational transmission of migration capital: The role of family migration history and lived migration experiences
Volume 50 - Article 29    | Keywords: childhood, emigration, Europe, immigration, life course

The influence of parental cancer on the mental health of children and young adults: Evidence from Norwegian register data on healthcare consultations
Volume 50 - Article 27    | Keywords: cancer, children, fixed effects, longitudinal, mental health, parents registers

Differences in mortality before retirement: The role of living arrangements and marital status in Denmark
Volume 50 - Article 20    | Keywords: inequalities, living arrangements, marital status, mortality, retirement

Immigrant mortality advantage in the United States during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic
Volume 50 - Article 7    | Keywords: COVID-19, immigrants, mortality

Measuring the educational gradient of period fertility in 28 European countries: A new approach based on parity-specific fertility estimates
Volume 49 - Article 34    | Keywords: education, Europe, period fertility, quantum, tempo, total fertility rate (TFR)