Growing up in Diverse Societies: The Integration of the Children of Immigrants in England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden (Proceedings of the . in the humanities and social sciences, 215)

Growing up in Diverse Societies provides a comprehensive analysis of the integration of children of immigrants in England, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. It is based on the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU), which included harmonised interviews with almost 19,000 14-15-year-olds. Growing up in Diverse Societies studies the life situation, social relations, and attitudes of adolescents in different ethnic minority groups, and compares these systematically to the majority youth in the four countries. The chapters cover a wide range of aspects of integration, all addressing comparisons between origin groups, generations, and destination countries, and elucidating processes accounting for differences.

The results challenge much of the current thinking on the state of integration. In some respects, such as own economic means, delinquency, and mental health, children of immigrants are surprisingly similar to majority youth, while in other respects there are large dissimilarities. There are also substantial differences between ethnic minority groups, with the economic and cultural distance of the origin regions to the destination country being a key factor. For some outcomes, such as language proficiency or host country identification, dissimilarities seem to narrow over generations, but this does not hold for other outcomes, such as religiosity and attitudes. Remaining differences partly depend on ethnic segregation, some on socioeconomic inequality, and others on parental influences. Most interestingly, Growing up in Diverse Societies finds that the four destination countries, though different in their immigration histories, policy approaches, and contextual conditions, are on the whole rather similar in the general patterns of integration and in the underlying processes.

Frank Kalter studied at the University of Cologne and finished his dissertation and habilitation at the University of Mannheim. He became Professor of Sociology at the University of Leipzig in 2004 and moved back to Mannheim in 2009. He was President of the European Academy of Sociology from 2011 to 2015 and director of the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) from 2014 to 2017. Currently he also serves as the co-founding-director of the governmental DeZIM Institute for research on migration and integration in Berlin. His research interests include migration, integration, and formal theory building.


Jan O. Jonsson received his PhD from Stockholm University and became Professor of Sociology at the Swedish Institute for Social Research in 1998. Since 2007, he is a fellow of the Swedish Royal Academy of Science, and since 2012 Official Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford University. His research interests are social stratification, including educational inequality, social mobility, and poverty; the welfare and living conditions of children and youth; and ethnic integration. He is the PI of the Swedish Level of Living Surveys and of the Swedish CILS4EU survey, and the author, together with Robert Erikson, of Can Education be Equalized? (1996).


Frank van Tubergen is Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology, Utrecht University, Netherlands. In 2010, he was elected as a fellow of the Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), and in 2011 as a member of the European Academy of Sociology. His research interests are social networks, immigration, and religion. His publications appeared in various international journals, such as American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Demography, and European Sociological Review.


Anthony Heath studied at Trinity College, Cambridge before taking up Fellowships at Churchill College, Cambridge and then at Jesus College, Oxford. He moved to an Official Fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford in 1987 and become the founding Professor of Sociology at the University of Oxford in 1999. He was Director of the British Election Studies from 1983 to 1997. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1992 and was awarded a CBE for services to social science in 2013.