Timing, Order and Determinants in the Transition to Adulthood of Female Immigrants in Spain

Victoria Prieto Rosas, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Do migrants experience the same transformations observed along natives cohorts in their transition to adulthood? Focusing on transitions from the parental home and into employment, partnership and parenthood, we examine differences in the timing and standardization of transitions to adulthood by migration status and birth cohort. Retrospective data provided by the Spanish Fertility, Family and Values Survey 2006 was analyzed through Event History and Sequence analysis techniques. Results showed that migrants have postponed the TA events as much as natives did along cohorts, except for childbearing. The destandardization hypothesis was verified for natives, while the youngest cohorts of immigrants show higher levels of age relatedness in their TA. Other findings point to the fact that immigrants are prone to experience the departure from parents’ home independently from a family-formation process. Moreover, among them the cohort effect of postponement seems less pronounced when compared to natives, for this specific transition.