‘Fighting for Something Great …’: Intergenerational Constellations and Functions of Self-culturalisation for Adolescents in Migrant Families

Abstract

This article spells out the mechanisms of intergenerational transmission of relational styles in the contexts of migration and adolescence, exploring both their productive and restrictive dimensions. Parts of the parental biography that remain unprocessed can be interpolated by the children into their own histories. Such constellations can lead to life stories full of detours and ruptures. Attempts to overcome these issues can result in the recourse to self-ethnicisation or self-culturalisation, a process with various possible forms. In a productive variation, we can see the creation of something new from facets of the culture of origin. In a defensive and concretising variation, however, such attempts have the function of reinforcing one’s own fragile identity through a rigid understanding of tradition and religion.