Ethnic Minority Youth at the Crossroads: Between Traditionalism and Liberal Value Orientations

Abstract

This chapter explores how sexual liberalisation values differ between young people with an immigrant background and their majority peers in Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands and England. It focuses in particular on cultural aspects of immigrant integration, including acculturative change associated with immigrant generations, as well as youth’s varying ethno-cultural heritages and religious affiliations. Analyses document the tendency to more-conservative attitudes among minorities with a more traditional background, in terms of both religious affiliation and country of origin. That cultural imprints are resilient towards acculturative tendencies is also sustained by our findings of no significant differences between first- and second-generation immigrants. Consistently across all four CILS4EU countries, the more religious individuals displayed lower levels of sexual liberalism, other things being equal. Parents are proved to be influential in young people’s value formation, with the congruence of values between parents and children being significantly stronger in more-religious families. Finally, the study highlights the assimilative role of interethnic mixing in terms of either intermarriages or young people’s interethnic friendship ties.