Migration and change in parent-child relationships: the case of Turkish migrants in Germany

The main aim of this paper is to explain the change of educational attitudes and socialization practices in Turkish migrant families by an individualistic costs-and-benefits-model and to confront this with empirical findings. This model is an interesting theoretical alternative to the widely accepted 'sociological' value-explanations stemming from the Durkheim-Parsons-Tradition. A variety of empirical detail phenomena (even) out of the domain of parent-child relationships, such as generative behavior, early childcare, educational attitudes, familial socialization, sex-typing, under varying contextual and individual conditions could be related to a common nomological core which works with few, simple basic assumptions. This explanation is mainly a more complete reconstruction of the approach contained in the studies on the 'values of children' (especially in Turkey). This reconstruction was extended to assumptions on parent-child relationships under changing familial contexts and individual conditions which result from migration. In particular, processes were emphasized which result from a combination of context opportunities and individual alternatives. The data for this study came from the research project "Socialization and Interaction in Families of Turkish Work Migrants" and was collected in 1984. 520 interviews were conducted. The empirical analysis shows once again that it is neither necessary nor meaningful to claim a special methodological or theoretical status for the explanation of behavior under migrant conditions as has often been the case for research on minorities with great cultural distance, seeking 'other' research methods as well as 'genuine' explanations. The general explanation discussed here has proved to be rather steadfast, even for cross-cultural research purposes. Nevertheless, the use of general explanations does not suspend the methodological necessity to find specifically valid indicators for the actors in the respective different situations of action. However, this general problem of empirical confirmation, which is, of course, intensified in the case of social differentiation and of cross-cultural comparisons, can be separated analytically from validity problems.