Negotiating independence and tradition: plans for career, marriage and family among daughters of immigrants enrolled in higher education in Norway

ABSTRACT

Concerns about the integration of minority migrant populations in Western Europe often form around issues of gender inequity. One particular concern is linked to educated minority women’s work participation upon family formation. Based on 16 in-depth interviews with young adult daughters of immigrants in Norway, all enrolled in prestigious educational tracks, I ask: What do they plan for regarding their future family and work situations, and how are their parents’ wishes and expectations present in these plans? My findings suggest that the interviewees plan to pursue a prestigious career simultaneously as they want to enter a within-group, parent-assisted marriage. The aim of the article is to investigate how these women make sense of this situation, negotiating between what is often perceived to be ‘an independent choice’ and more traditional behaviour. By drawing on narratives that blur the boundaries between an ‘arranged’ and a ‘romantic’ marriage, these women challenge the alleged opposition between traditional family formation and women’s occupational success, and further insist on the capability of being successfully integrated without it entailing a full liberation from their family’s customs. The accommodative features of these narratives are, however, potentially challenged by the use of another narrative, ‘it has to be love’.

KEYWORDS:

• Work-family balance
• children of immigrants
• intergenerational relations
• higher education
• marriage customs

Acknowledgments

I want to thank the journal’s editors and the anonymous referees for their constructive feedback. I also want to thank Kristinn Hegna and Ferdinand Andreas Mohn for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this article

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Throughout the paper, I use the terms ‘daughters of immigrants’, ‘children of immigrants’, ‘the second generation’ and ‘descendants’ to refer to both those who are born in Norway by immigrant parents, and those who came here before school age (the so –called 1,5 generation) (Rumbaut 2004). Although put together in the same term, it is important to note that their parents have migrated from different countries. I acknowledge that the use of these terms is therefore somewhat problematic, as they hide the group’s heterogeneity. Still, I have chosen to apply them – as they are commonly used in previous research articles.