That I want to Transmit it too! Value Transfer between Parents and Their Adult Children in the Context of Migration

The world’s demography has evolved requiring policy makers and practitioners to face important issues related to the steadily increasing migration. However, studies focussing on value similarities (vs. differences) between adult children and their parents in host national compared to immigrant families are still scarce. The migration process and cultural contact between host and home culture may induce changes in the value system by means of mutual influences, often more pronounced in the second generation than in the first. To what extend do cultures influence each other, and what possible implications do they entail for the familial value system and for migrants’ identity processes? A previous quantitative study showed that emerging adults from Portuguese migrant families—similar to their Luxembourgish peers—frequently scored higher on self-oriented values compared to their parents who tended to score higher on social-oriented values.

The current study provides a closer look at the process of intergenerational value transfer by drawing on a qualitative cross-cultural comparison of n = 10 Portuguese and n = 10 Luxembourgish dyadic interviews of parents and their adult children, all living in Luxembourg. We focus on different key issues regarding transmission processes as perceived by parents compared to adult children in both cultural groups.

First analyses show discrepancies between both generations with parental motivation indeed not always being sufficient in the transmission process. However, regardless of culture and generation, a majority seems to agree on the importance of the transmission of language as an essential factor of cultural and family values.