Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU)

The project focuses on the intergenerational integration of the children of immigrants in four selected European countries: Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Funded within the NORFACE programme, it is the first comprehensive and fully-standardized panel study on this topic in Europe. In 2010, we have interviewed children of immigrants and their majority peers at age 14, as well as their parents, and we will follow up the children over the next two years, thus covering a crucial, formative period of their lives. Based on these data, we will investigate the complex causal interplay between the processes of structural, social, and cultural integration. The project starts from the assumption that only thereby can one account for the important differences between countries, ethnic groups, and domains of life, as revealed by prior research on the integration of the second generation in Europe. The project will be the first to collect the data needed to uncover the mechanisms behind these diverse and complex patterns: large-scale, strictly comparative, theory-guided, multilevel and longitudinal data. All data will be made available to the international research community for public use. Thus, in addition to our own substantive research contributions, we intend to build an enduring infrastructure for continuing research on the intergenerational integration of immigrants in Europe.