Suchergebnisse

This open access wide-ranging collation of papers examines a host of issues in studying second-generation immigrants, their life courses, and their relations with older generations. Tightly focused on methodological aspects, both quantitative and qualitative, the volume features the work of authors from numerous countries, from differing disciplines, and approaches. A key addition in a corpus of literature which has until now been restricted to studying the childhood, adolescence and youth of the children of immigrants, the material includes analysis of longitudinal and transnational efforts to address challenges such as defining the population to be studied, and the difficulties of follow-up research that spans both time and geographic space. In addition to perceptive reviews of extant literature, chapters also detail work in surveying the children of immigrants in Europe, the USA, and elsewhere. Authors address key questions such as the complexities of surveying each generation in families where parents have migrated and left children in their country of origin, and the epistemological advances in methodology which now challenge assumptions based on the Westphalian nation-state paradigm. The book is in part an outgrowth of temporal factors (immigrants' children are now reaching adulthood in more significant numbers), but also reflects the added sophistication and sensitivity of social science surveys. In linking theoretical and methodological factors, it shows just how much the study of these second generations, and their families, can be enriched by evolving methodologies. This book is open access under a CC BY license. This is the best book we have about the methodology to conduct research on the second generation or the children of immigrants and their integration in the countries they reside. Claudio Bolzman, Laura Bernardi and Jean-Marie Le Goff have convened a large number of renowned scholars from different countries to reflect on the life course perspective, the use of quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods and the transnational approach. Prof. Rafael Alarcón Acosta, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte.

intergenerational relations; transfer behaviour; migration; multicultural; religious identity; research methods; second generation

AbstractObjectiveThe article examines how maternal gatekeeping practices evolve in the post‐separation trajectory and identifies the main relational and contextual factors shaping these processes over time.BackgroundStudies of maternal gatekeeping have only recently begun to include post‐separation families based on cross‐sectional research designs. This article is theoretically grounded in a life‐course and human agency framework, and it both offers a novel understanding of maternal gatekeeping as a dynamic process and examines its relational embeddedness.MethodsThe data stem from the prospective qualitative study "The multiple paths of lone parenthood," which has been ongoing in Switzerland for over a decade and includes four waves of semistructured interviews with mothers who have experienced lone parenthood (N = 88 interviews).ResultsMost mothers reported active facilitation practices at the beginning of their trajectory, encouraging the father–child relationship. Subsequently, shifts toward hands‐off or active gate‐closing practices took place over time along with the evolution of relational circumstances, such as the father's involvement or children's autonomy, or by an accumulation of negative experiences.ConclusionThe relationship with the nonresident father creates ongoing moral dilemmas for mothers over the post‐separation trajectory. Indeed, these mothers must navigate social norms that emphasize the importance of ensuring father–child contact while safeguarding the child's well‐being and ensuring that the father complies with visitation arrangements and alimony.ImplicationsProfessional support and legal regulations should consider the moral dilemmas experienced by mothers by establishing measures to relieve separated mothers of the need to take the initiative to obtain the father's compliance with their obligations.

Objective: This article shows the analytical value of an approach that integrates theoretical elaborations about the temporal orientations of different types of agency (pragmatic, identity, and life course) and uncertainty management, to analyse how families dealt with the challenges emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. Background: The pandemic has been a major shock that has seriously challenged families' ability to adapt to sudden changes affecting multiple domains of life. Switzerland established a low-intensity lockdown in the spring of 2020, with social-distancing measures based on official recommendations. Changes in employment situations and school closures resulted in significant alterations to family life. This study examines how individuals with a trajectory of lone parenthood dealt with the increased uncertainties generated by this novel context. Method: Empirical data stems from the fourth wave of fieldwork of the longitudinal project "The multiple paths of lone parenthood", ongoing in French-speaking Switzerland since 2012-2013. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 26 participants between April and June 2020. Results: The emergence of novel situations, the ambiguity of social-distancing measures, and the breakdown of routines accentuated pragmatic agency for most families. With the chronification of uncertainty, parents sought to regain identity agency by restabilising everyday routines. Uncertainty about future developments diminished life course agency, especially for parents in more insecure situations. Conclusion: The study offers an original perspective on the challenges of living through increased uncertainty and changing environments triggered by the pandemic, by highlighting the relevance of temporalities for understanding agency within life course processes.

Economic instability, social changes, and new social policies place economic insecurity high on the scholarly and political agenda. We contribute to these debates by proposing a new multidimensional, intertemporal measure of economic insecurity that accounts for both its multiplicity and its dynamism. First, we develop three theory-driven, multidimensional measures of economic insecurity. Principal Components Analysis validates the measure. Second, we develop a dynamic approach to insecurity, using longitudinal data and a newly revised headcount method. Third, we then use our new measures to analyze the distribution of insecurity in Europe. Our analysis shows that insecurity is widespread across Europe, even in low-inequality, encompassing welfare states. Moreover, it extends across income groups and occupational classes, reaching into the middle classes.

In Belgium, lone parent families represent almost one fourth of the households with children, aside from the existence of regional differences in the phenomenon's prevalence. Zooming in on Flanders, the poverty risk for this type of family is significantly higher compared to couple-with-children households and the general population; thus, labour market participation represents a crucial resource for individuals heading such households to cope with the economic needs of the family and to avoid long-lasting poverty or to rely extensively on social assistance. We use data from the Crossroads Bank of Social Security (CBSS Datawarehouse) to study Flemish lone mothers' patterns of labour market participation and test the association between employment trajectories after lone parenthood and both individual and household characteristics. Flanders represents an interesting case because of (i) the relatively high diffusion of lone motherhood, (ii) the presence of welfare measures supporting a number of different types of recipients (even to different extents and not necessarily so generous to keep them out of poverty), and (iii) the availability of longitudinal data to observe lone mothers' employment trajectories over time. We find that differences exist among lone mothers, who thus experience different risk of social exclusion driven by family and labour market arrangements set up to resolve the potentially contradictory trade-off between the needs for care and for income. The age at which mothers have children is crucial in understanding their future exclusion from the labour market: selection into early lone motherhood is associated with lower employment opportunities. Furthermore, it is the number of children below 17 in the household rather than the presence of very small children that defines a lower probability of having a strong labour market attachment through full-time jobs, and that increases the likelihood of being unemployed/inactive and receiving welfare benefits.

AbstractDespite the growing consensus that midlife appears to be a particularly vulnerable life phase for lower mental health and wellbeing, little is known about the potential reasons for this phenomenon or who the individuals at higher risk are. Our study used six waves (2013–2018) of the Swiss Household Panel (n = 5,315), to compare the distribution of mental health and wellbeing, as well as their key correlates, between midlife (40–55 years) and younger adults (25–39 years) in Switzerland. Moreover, using network analysis to investigate interrelationships across life domains, we describe the complex interrelations between multiple domain-specific correlates and indicators of both mental health and wellbeing across the two age groups. Middle-aged (age 40–55) individuals reported lower life satisfaction and joy, as well as higher anger, sadness, and worry than young adults (age 25–39), with the effect sizes reaching up to 0.20 Cohen's d. They also reported lower social support, relationships satisfaction, health satisfaction, and higher job demands and job insecurity. Relationships satisfaction and social support were the most consistent correlates across all three indicators of wellbeing in both age groups. Health satisfaction was more strongly, and directly, interrelated with energy and optimism in midlife compared with young adulthood (0.21 vs 0.12, p = 0.007). Job demands were more strongly linked with anger and sadness in midlife. The network model helped us to identify correlates or their clusters with direct and strong links to mental health and wellbeing. We hypothesised that health satisfaction, relationships satisfaction, social support, and job demands may help to explain worse mental health and wellbeing in midlife.

Economic instability, social changes, and new social policies place economic insecurity high on the scholarly and political agenda. We contribute to these debates by proposing a new multidimensional, intertemporal measure of economic insecurity that accounts for both its multiplicity and its dynamism. First, we develop three theory-driven, multidimensional measures of economic insecurity. Principal Components Analysis validates the measure. Second, we develop a dynamic approach to insecurity, using longitudinal data and a newly revised headcount method. Third, we then use our new measures to analyze the distribution of insecurity in Europe. Our analysis shows that insecurity is widespread across Europe, even in low-inequality, encompassing welfare states. Moreover, it extends across income groups and occupational classes, reaching into the middle classes.

Over the past decades Europe has witnessed fundamental changes of its population dynamics and population structure. Fertility has fallen below replacement level in almost all European countries, while childbearing behavior and family formation have become more diverse. Life expectancy has increased in Western Europe for both females and males, but has been declining for men in some Eastern European countries. Immigration from non-European countries has increased substantially, as has mobility within Europe. These changes pose major challenges to population studies, as conventional theoretical assumptions regarding demographic behavior and demographic development seem unfit to provide convincing explanations of the recent demographic changes. This book, derived from the symposium on "The Demography of Europe" held at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany in November 2007 in honor of Professor Jan M. Hoem, brings together leading population researchers in the area of fertility, family, migration, life-expectancy, and mortality. The contributions present key issues of the new demography of Europe and discuss key research advances to understand the continent's demographic development at the turn of the 21st century

The COVID-19 pandemic and related restrictions have triggered simultaneous changes across multiple life domains within a very short timeframe. This major shock has seriously challenged the ability of families to adapt to unanticipated changes over which they had little control. Switzerland instigated a low-intensity lockdown in response to COVID-19 in the spring of 2020. The resulting alterations to family life included changes to employment situations and working conditions (such as layoffs, temporary unemployment and home-based work) and the need to arrange home-schooling and childcare. This study examines how a sample of individuals with a trajectory of lone parenthood living in French-speaking Switzerland adapted their everyday lives to accommodate the shifting demands in the domains of employment and family responsibilities. Interviews were conducted between April and June 2020 for the longitudinal project "The multiple paths of lone parenthood". Using this data, we analysed the COVID-related changes to work and family life, focusing on their time structuring. We found that parents who remained employed faced the greatest time pressures, although their experiences varied significantly depending on the adaptability of their work schedules, as well as the child(ren)'s age(s) and degree of autonomy. Home-based work and home-schooling resulted in more flexible schedules, although parents with the greatest work and family demands sought more time-structured organisation to facilitate their articulation. Social support was a crucial buffer for parents with conflicting demands across domains.

We have investigated the phenomenon of deprivation in contemporary Switzerland through the adoption of a multidimensional, dynamic approach. By applying Self Organizing Maps (SOM) to a set of 33 non-monetary indicators from the 2009 wave of the Swiss Household Panel (SHP), we identified 13 prototypical forms (or clusters) of well-being, financial vulnerability, psycho-physiological fragility and deprivation within a topological dimensional space. Then new data from the previous waves (2003 to 2008) were classified by the SOM model, making it possible to estimate the weight of the different clusters in time and reconstruct the dynamics of stability and mobility of individuals within the map. Looking at the transition probabilities between year t and year t+1, we observed that the paths of mobility which catalyze the largest number of observations are those connecting clusters that are adjacent on the topological space.

In dem demografischen Beitrag zur Entwicklung der Fertilität in Deutschland stellen die Autoren ihr Forschungsprojekt 'Freunde, Familie und das eigene Leben' vor, das von den folgenden Forschungsfragen geleitet wird: (1) Welche Vorstellungen, Erwartungen, Wünsche und Pläne haben junge Erwachsene in Ost- und Westdeutschland hinsichtlich Familiengründung oder Familienerweiterung? (2) Wie sehen die Strukturen und die Beziehungen in ihren sozialen Netzwerken aus? Welche Kanäle und Mechanismen sozialer Einflussnahme lassen sich für die Entscheidung zur Elternschaft ermitteln? Der Schwerpunkt des Aufsatzes liegt auf der Darstellung des Forschungsdesigns und der methodischen Besonderheiten, die im ersten Abschnitt in ihren Vor- und Nachteilen diskutiert werden. Dabei finden auch die Erfahrungen aus der Datensammlung (derzeitiger Stand: etwa ein Drittel der vorgesehenen Interviews) Berücksichtigung. Verwendet wird ein Methodenmix aus einem halbstrukturierten Leitfadeninterview, einer Netzwerkkarte und einer Netzwerktabelle sowie am Ende des Interviews einem Kurzfragebogen zur Erfassung soziodemografischer Daten. Eine Besonderheit ist die Auswahl der Befragten: interviewt werden jeweils eine(n) Hauptbefragte(n) und drei ihrer/seiner wichtigsten Netzwerkpartner. Der zweite Abschnitt gibt einige beispielhafte Einblicke in das gesammelte Material. Ein Beispiel verdeutlicht, welcher Art die Erzählungen über soziale Einflüsse sind, welche die Forscher in ihren Interviews erhalten. Zwei weitere Beispiele verdeutlichen, welcher Art die Strukturdaten sind, die man mit Hilfe der Netzwerkkarte ermitteln kann, wobei hierfür die Netzwerkgröße und die Dichte des Netzwerks herausgegriffen wird. Die Datensammlung ist zum jetzigen Zeitpunkt noch nicht abgeschlossen und es konnten erst einige wenige Einblicke in das reichhaltige empirische Material gewonnen werden; das Analysepotential dieser Daten ist jedoch bemerkenswert. (ICG2)