Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses changing parent-child and sibling relationships in a Syrian refugee family in The Netherlands. More specifically, it addresses the impact on family dynamics of the recent marriage of the eldest daughter, presently the family's main 'broker' to Dutch society.

Paper long abstract:

The idea that reality is more complex, ambivalent, and less coherent than linear approaches of post-migration trajectories show, is align with the development of life courses of Syrian refugee families in The Netherlands. Their life courses show radical ruptures, and alterations in relations between parents and children. Simultaneously, they show strong efforts to rebuild continuities and to create a basis for desired futures.

In the presented case several key life events occur in a short period of (compressed) time. The eldest daughter of the family married less than two years after the family's settling in The Netherlands. Besides marrying and leaving the parental home, she has become a student in higher education and is expecting her first child. Analysis of how she and her family deal with these changes offers insights into the complex ways variables as agency, age, gender, transnational relations, values and beliefs inform refugees' pathways in building new personal and family lives.

I will embed this particular case study in the larger context of my ethnographic research among Syrian refugee families and their networks, during the five-year period of their temporary residence permit. The research investigates the differential effects of forced migration on different generations, and their impact on parent-child relations and the integration of individual family members in Dutch society. It does so by taking a developmental 'family resilience' perspective, which positions both children and parents in the context of a family system that interacts with larger social systems and develops over time.