Culture-brokering as Opportunity and Risk for Adolescent Immigrants

The focus of this research project is to investigate the effects of culture brokering on adolescent immigrants. Culture brokering is defined as adolescents' actions in helping their parents to cope with the new cultural context, such as explaining the school system or translating documents. Culture brokering originates from a different pace of socio-cultural adaptation between adolescents and their parents with adolescents adapting more rapidly to the new culture. In scientific debate culture brokering has been described as both opportunity and risk for adolescents' development, however, without specifying the conditions for positive vs. negative outcomes. To identify these conditions is the major aim of this project. The results will offer opportunities for prevention programs helping immigrant families in dealing with the differential pace of acculturation and can contribute to the growing societal necessity to successfully integrate immigrant families. The project is funded by the Jacobs Foundation.

Projektleiter P. Titzmann