Transition to adulthood in France: Do descendants of immigrants differ from natives ?

This study examines whether major changes in patterns of transition to adulthood have taken place among descendants of immigrants in France. We simultaneously analyze the demographic events that make up the transition to adulthood for two main groups of immigrants’ descendants, i.e., North African and Southern European, and compare them to the pathway of native-born French. We identify five groups of similar trajectories using sequence and cluster analysis. In order to analyze how trajectories to adulthood are shaped by ethnic origin, gender, background characteristics and education, we estimate multinomial logistic regression on the likelihood of belonging to each of the five selected clusters. We find fairly similar paths to adulthood for descendants of immigrants and natives. However, specific patterns do emerge for immigrants’ descendants. They stay significantly longer in the parental home, partly because their parents come from societies characterized by strong family ties, and partly because they have greater difficulties becoming self-sufficient. Descendants of immigrants from North Africa, especially women, also have a lower probability of cohabiting. Finally, descendants of immigrants from North Africa behave more traditionally while descendants of immigrants from Southern Europe behave more like native French.