Description: This dissertation enriched the knowledge on ‘integration’ by combining a multidimensional with a multi- and intergenerational perspective. We added to existing knowledge by including not only migrants and their children in our study, but also their grandchildren; and by studying integration from not only a multi- but also an intergenerational perspective. Furthermore, we showed how the concept of (the politics of) belonging provides much needed additional tools to open up the discussion about the definition and the pathways of integration with the perspectives of (descendants of) migrants themselves, to conceptualise their transnational belongings next to their local ones, and to grasp the dynamic interplay between (descendants of) migrants and the broader (receiving) society. We concluded that (studying) integration should not only be about increasing similarities to a dominant majority group, but also about the remaking of the mainstream and its growing capacity for dissent.
Promoter(s): Ilse Derluyn , Lieve Bradt
Researcher(s): Floor Verhaeghe
Faculty / Faculties: Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences
Period of time: 2012 - 2019

Description: This research is about assimilation processes of several generations of migrants (1st, 2nd, 3rd generation) in different time episodes (sixties, eighties, present). Assimilation is not seen as an ideal to reach, but rachter as a possible way of examining processes migrants go through in the receiving country. Assimilation is used as a multidimensional concept, with a structural (education, labour market), cultural (language, leisure time), social (network, membership of organizations) and identificational dimension (self-identification in terms of ethnic/regional/national belonging). Objective as well as subjective components (own perception of migrants) are taken into account. Three studies are planned: a survey with youngsters in the last years of secondary schools in Genk and Sint-Niklaas, family interviews with multigenerational families with a migrant background and a discourse analysis of newspaper articles of different time episodes.
Promoter(s): Ilse Derluyn, Lieve Bradt
Researcher(s): Floor Verhaeghe
Faculty: Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences
Period of time: 2012 - 2018