Ethnic diversity in intergenerational solidarity

Abstract

The Dutch population is ageing, including the populations of immigrants who moved to the Netherlands several decades ago. As a consequence, the number of elderly immigrants will increase sharply in the coming years. Immigrants are likely to experience old age differently from native older people, and to have different beliefs and attitudes about their children's obligations. At the same time, adult children might have different beliefs about their obligations than their parents. However, little is known about ethnic and generational variations in these areas. In this dissertation, a comparative perspective on intergenerational solidarity in different ethnic groups in the Netherlands is offered. By systematically comparing different aspects of intergenerational solidarity among immigrants and Dutch natives, theoretical ideas about family decline in Western families and collectivist family ideals in immigrant families will be questioned. By focusing on immigrants who have parents in the country of origin, we add a transnational perspective to the study of intergenerational solidarity. Besides the native Dutch, this study includes immigrants and their children from the four largest immigrant groups in the Netherlands: Turks, Moroccans, Surinamese and Antilleans. A mixed-methods approach, combining in-depth qualitative data and large-scale quantitative data, is used and analyses are based on data from the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study (NKPS). Results show that although ethnic differences in attitudes are large, differences in actual behaviour are less pronounced.