Abstract
This chapter proposes an integration of family research and the sociology of migration using a theory of cultural transmission in minorities recently developed by the authors. A central assumption of this theory is that sociocultural groups have a culture-transmission motive-the desire to preserve their culture and transmit it to the next generation-that is typically activated in migration situations, and then motivates activities designed to counter the perceived threat to cultural transmission. To show how this theory can help to understand social phenomena at the intersection of family research and the sociology of migration, we summarize five key findings of research on the role of the culture of origin in immigrant families and describe how they can be explained the theory: (1) cultural transmission in immigrant families typically succeeds as well as in non-immigrant families; (2) even second and third-generation immigrants typically have a strong identification with their culture of origin, which (3) manifests itself, apart from self-identification, primarily in the preservation of the language of origin, the importance placed on religious education, and intra-ethnic marriage preferences; (4) of crucial importance for the maintenance of ethnic identity in migrants is ethnic socialization in the family; and (5) abandonment of the native culture and assimilation to the majority society are neither necessary for, nor typical of, successful integration. We argue that these findings can be consistently explained by the theory of cultural transmission in minorities.
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Notes
- 1.
The following literature review is not exhaustive, but given the large samples and the diversity of the migrant groups surveyed in the reviewed studies, we believe one can be reasonably certain that their main results are stable. For more general overviews of the interdisciplinary fields of cultural transmission and acculturation research, see respectively, Schönpflug (2009) and Zick (2010).
- 2.
All translations from German are by the authors.
- 3.
- 4.
Contemporary social scientists often define minorities not primarily in terms of characteristics such as language, religion, traditions, or even size, but in terms of their power relationship to other groups (e.g. Polm 1995). According to this definition, a minority is a low-power subgroup of a society. Our theory is compatible with this definition, but is restricted to cultural minorities, that is, those low-power groups that have, or claim, a cultural identity.
- 5.
More direct evidence for the culture- transmission motive was obtained in a recent survey study (Mchitarjan and Reisenzein 2013b).
- 6.
Note that the theory of cultural transmission in minorities can be applied to both the explanation of particular action types (for example, “Why do migrants found schools abroad?”) and—provided that enough information on a single case is available—the explanation of concrete individual actions (for example, “Why did the Russian emigrants in Berlin in 1921 found a school for higher education?”) (see Mchitarjan 2006).
- 7.
From the evolutionary perspective adopted here, “culture” can be defined broadly as „information capable of affecting individuals’ behavior that they acquire from other members of their species through teaching, imitation, and other forms of social transmission” (Richerson and Boyd 2005, p. 5). As argued below, the evolutionary perspective suggests that the core of a cultural system consists of those pieces of information that are most important for allowing a social group to function as an adaptive unit. These include, in particular, the norms and values of a group and the ideology that supports them, as well as cultural characteristics that constitute reliable external signs of a person’s cultural identity, including language. These core elements of culture agree fairly well with a popular definition of culture proposed by social scientists, according to which “culture” denotes a system of socially transmitted norms and values that regulates the behavior of a group (see for example Maletzke 1996).
- 8.
Another reason is simply that immigrant parents are often not in sufficient command of the host language to be able to use it as the primary medium of communication in the family.
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Mchitarjan, I., Reisenzein, R. (2014). The Importance of the Culture of Origin in Immigrant Families: Empirical Findings and their Explanation by the Theory of Cultural Transmission in Minorities. In: Geisen, T., Studer, T., Yildiz, E. (eds) Migration, Familie und Gesellschaft. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-94126-4_8
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