Immigrating as a Family: A Study of Children’s Influence on Parents’ Integration

• In Event: The Development and Dynamics of Immigration Policy in Canada

Abstract

This study focuses on immigrant families’ dynamics and considers children's roleas in the context of resettlement and integration. While previous studies have focused on individuals within the family, either examining parents' or children's integration processes (Beauregard et al. 2014; Bornstein et al. 2006; Juang et Syed 2019), we focus on the interactions between parents and children, and examine family dynamics in the context of recent immigration. More importantly, we focus on children’s roles within the family and ask: How does having children affect immigrants' political integration?
While a large body of literature examines how immigrant children are affected by their new context, by schools, teachers, and their parents, only a handful of studies have considered that children can be active agents, with a capacity to influence their parents and family dynamics (Bloemrad et Trost 2008; Wong et Tseng 2008; García-Sánchez 2010). Our study considers the agency of children in the integration process (Titzmamann & Gniewosz 2018) and examines two types of potential influences of children or adolescents on their parents.
First, we consider the indirect influence of children on their parents, and examine how having children will lead immigrant parents to interact more with several governmental agencies (Wong et Tseng 2008), and notably educational institutions (Charette and Kalubi 2017; Beauregard et al. 2014), which has the potential to affect parents’ political development and re-socialization through policy-feedback effects (Mettler and Soss 2004; Pierson 1993).
Secondly, we consider the direct influence of children and explore how children may take on different active roles within the household to help their parents integrate in their host country, including through language brokerage (Garcia-Sanchez 2010; Oznobishin et Kurman 2018), information brokerage (Carlos 2021), and parentification (Valenzuela 2014; Titzmamann & Gniewosz 2018).
We capitalize on a new three-wave panel survey of recent immigrants and non-immigrants in Quebec - including 1,600 parents - to study immigrant families’ integration experiences. We first examine immigrant parents’ contacts with various public services and the quality of these contacts, and notably the contacts with their children’s schools. Secondly, we look at the roles and responsibilities of children within the family, and notably whether children translate, explain cultural specificities, and provide administrative assistance to their parents. Finally, we estimate how contacts with schools and children’s roles impact parents’ integration, using several indicators like attachment to Quebec, political engagement (political interest, knowledge and institutional trust) and civic engagement (generalized trust, volunteering and community participation), while controlling for various socio-demographic characteristics of immigrant respondents (such as education, gender, occupation).

Authors

• Valerie-Anne Maheo, Laval University

• Anne Cécile Imouza, McGill UNniversity