Intergenerational Perspectives on Trust and Belonging in Postmigration Societies

Session conveners: Outi Kähäri outi.kahari@oulu.fi & Elina Turjanmaa elina.turjanmaa@uef.fi

The workshop is arranged as part of the project Intergenerational Non-Belonging: Minority Identities and Mental Health in Swedish-Finnish Families funded by Kone Foundation (2026-2029).

Session description

In this workshop, we explore intergenerational experiences of trust and belonging in postmigration societies. Studies on migration and minorities have rarely looked at how specific historical events and circumstances together with everyday experiences of institutions (e.g. police, welfare services, administration, schools, employers) shape institutional and social trust, and sense of belonging of migrants’ children and grandchildren. Migrant parents’ trust in institutions is often shaped by their experiences before, during, and after migration, and their level of trust affects also their children’s trust. Family’s past experiences of transnational repression and prolonged control over their families in society shapes experiences of trust among refugees and their children and grandchildren.  

Moreover, intergenerational experiences of racism and discrimination typically erode migrants’ and minorities’ feelings of safety, belonging, as well as social and institutional trust over time. These experiences may be shared in intimate social circles such as families, but they may also remain unspoken, transmitted non-verbally. From the perspective of intergenerational transmissions, parents’ experiences of discrimination, for example, have been found to have consequences for the well-being of their children even if the children do not experience direct discrimination themselves.

We invite theoretical, methodological, and empirical presentations that examine intergenerational aspects of trust relationships, belonging, and non-belonging in postmigration societies in which historical and contemporary experiences of migration are present.  The presentations may concern some aspects of trust or belonging from an intergenerational perspective. The submissions may address, for example, the kinds of mechanisms through which trust and distrust are transmitted across generations, the questions of ethnic, cultural, national, and family identities across generations, the processes and ramifications of cumulative historical and contemporary experiences of trust and belonging within families and migrant/minority communities, the ways trust relationships can be socially rebuilt and fostered after traumatic histories, or family memory of trust and belonging. We also welcome methodological papers looking at how intergenerational trust and belonging should be studied and encourage presenters to look at distrust or non-belonging as a social resource for a collective awareness and action – such as antiracism.