“It's on Time That They Assimilate” – Differential acculturation expectations towards first and second generation immigrants

The paper, in plain language

Adding the generation question

Research on what majorities expect of immigrants had compared valued and devalued groups but ignored generation — odd, when a third of Germany's immigrant-background population was born there. With David Sam, I had German majority members rate their acculturation expectations toward first- and second-generation targets from a devalued group, Turks, and a more neutral one, Poles.

Less room for the second generation

Across target groups, participants endorsed less integrationism toward the second generation: tolerance for keeping heritage culture shrinks once you are born in Germany. The interaction sharpens it — assimilation demands rose for second-generation Turks specifically, not for Poles. The title's logic: if you were born here and are staying, you should become one of us. Our companion work shows second-generation Turkish youth perceive exactly this pressure — and are also the group most committed to cultural maintenance. The effects are modest, the proposed threat mechanism was not measured, and generation is partly confounded with age.

Why it matters

The interactive acculturation framework predicts conflict where majority expectations and minority preferences collide, and this collision is head-on: rising assimilation demands meeting a settled preference for cultural maintenance. It reframes second-generation 'integration problems' as partly a majority-side production, and it was an early piece of the research line that grew into my work on majority-group acculturation and the expectations majorities impose.