Overview

The research project “Identity Development and Value Transmission among Veteran and Migrant Adolescents and their Families in Germany and Israel: Life Transitions and Contexts” will study the impact of migration on the development of personal and social values as a core aspect of adolescent identity. The study focuses on the comparison of values among immigrant and native youth as well as value transmission in immigrant and native families. Therefore, participants will come from six cultural groups, including migrants from the former Soviet Union to both Israel and Germany, Turkish immigrants to Germany, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and native samples from Israel and Germany.

Through a longitudinal comparison of these groups one can disentangle the effects of migration and of developmentally-induced change on identity formation.

The study not only explores the formation of participant’s general value schemes. Moreover, its special focus is on differences in adolescent’s value priorities depending on different social contexts (family, school, peers). Also, key psychological variables such as general life satisfaction or self-esteem are further analyzed in this study. They are assumed to be related to the process of value formation in general as well as in different contexts.