Why do Youth Support their Families? A Person-Oriented Approach in Migrant and Native Families

Technical Brokering of Immigrant Adolescents in Switzerland: A Developmental-Acculturative Perspective

“…Economic threat is reported among well-educated Swiss in high positions or Swiss who seek to improve their job positions because they see their opportunities reduced, particularly by highly skilled immigrating Germans (Helbling, 2011). These hassles are more pronounced among working adults, leading adolescents to adopt roles as culture brokers and support their parents in social integration even ten years and more after immigration (Aumann & Titzmann, 2020;Helbling, 2011). This is supported by research in other contexts that also revealed that acculturation is a life-long process.…”

“…This phenomenon is described as culture brokering (Tse, 1995) and commonly explained by children and adolescents adjusting at a faster pace to a new society and often outperforming their parents in sociocultural skills related to the new cultural context-socalled acculturation gaps (Cheung et al, 2011;Telzer, 2010). Culture brokering has also been shown to generalize to other (migration-unrelated) forms of support, such as instrumental (family decision-making) and emotional (family well-being) family support (Aumann & Titzmann, 2020;Jurkovic, 1997;Kam & Lazarevic, 2014).…”

“…For this reason, technical brokering is a form of support, which can occur in all families independent of immigrant background or socio-economic standing. Highly educated work migrant parents, for instance, may also rely on such support, because their jobs and responsibilities are time-intense (Aumann & Titzmann, 2020;Moser, 2009). Research on technical brokering and its impact on adolescent and family dynamics are particularly salient with regard to the technological progress in recent decades (Livingstone & Haddon, 2009;Van den Bulck et al, 2016).…”

“…Besides studying high SES immigrant adolescents and their families, this study applied a developmental (technical competence gaps between generations, family support general normative task in adolescence) and an acculturative perspective (technical brokering as part of adolescents support in parental acculturative adjustment) in explaining technical brokering. Studies showed that youths' support for their parents can be nurtured by a wide range of general (time constrains of employed parents, family circumstances such as parental divorce or illness, gender) and migrationspecific (socio-cultural adaptation difficulties from parents, culture brokering) factors in immigrant families (Aumann & Titzmann, 2020;Hooper, 2016). In some families these general and acculturative factors accumulate resulting in higher levels of youths' family involvement (Portes et al, 2005).…”

“…Furthermore, some studies suggested that migration-specific helping behavior might foster other (migration-unspecific) forms of support of adolescents. In particular culture brokering, a known predictor of general family support, may be related to technical brokering with adolescents providing high levels of culture brokering also providing high levels of technical brokering (Aumann & Titzmann, 2020;Weisskirch, 2020). However, the association between culture brokering and technical brokering may not be similar in strength between families.…”