The Remittances Behaviour of the Second Generation in Europe: Altruism or Self-Interest?

Elena Ambrosetti, Eralba Cela and Tineke Fokkema ()
Additional contact information
Tineke Fokkema: Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI)

No 368, Working Papers from Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali

Abstract: Whereas most research on remittances focuses on first-generation migrants, the aim of this paper is to investigate the remitting behaviour of the host country-born children of migrants - the second generation - in various European cities. Some important studies found that migrant transnationalism is not only a phenomenon for the first generation, but also apply to the second and higher generations, through, among other things, family visits, elder care, and remittances. At the same time, the maintenance of a strong ethnic identity in the 'host' society does not necessarily mean that second-generation migrants have strong transnational ties to their 'home' country. ;;The data used in this paper is from "The Integration of the European Second Generation" (TIES) project. The survey collected information on approximately 6,250 individuals aged 18-35 with at least one migrant parent from Morocco, Turkey or former Yugoslavia, in 15 European cities, regrouped in 8 'countries'. For the purpose of this paper, only analyses for Austria (Linz and Vienna) Switzerland (Basle and Zurich); Germany (Berlin and Frankfurt); France (Paris and Strasbourg); the Netherlands (Amsterdam and Rotterdam) Spain (Barcelona and Madrid); and Sweden (Stockholm) will be presented.;;To study the remitting behaviour of the second-generation Moroccans, Turks and former Yugoslavs residing in these 13 European cities, we will start with descriptive analyses (prevalence, amount), followed by logistic (multinomial) regression on the likelihood and amount of remittance. We are particularly interested in the following question: Are the second-generation remitters more driven by altruism or by self-interest? If altruism is the main driving force, we can expect that 'emotional attachment' factors (e.g., presence of parents in 'home' country, strong feelings to the country of origin or ethnic group of the parents, high intensity of cultural orientation towards the country of origin of the parents) will be the main predictors of the remitting behaviour, while factors like 'investment in parents' country of birth' and 'return intention' will be more central if second-generation migrants remit for self-interested reasons.

Keywords: European countries; migration; remittances; second generation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 F24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32
Date: 2011-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara, nep-eur and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://docs.dises.univpm.it/web/quaderni/pdf/368.pdf First version, 2011 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:anc:wpaper:368

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Maurizio Mariotti ().