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Paper short abstract:

Children are a great influence on the parents’ behaviour, and especially when having a migrant background. The parents adapt activities of their host-culture, while giving their children a belonging environment in their new resident country.

Paper long abstract:

Migrants’ everyday life is filled with challenges in finding ways to integrate to the new yet unknown society, and in constructing a better way of living, better income, education, and health care. The change of their residence consequently impacts and partly even transforms their social everyday life and routines, as they engage in new educational and labor systems, atmospheres, and celebrations. Having this in mind, the focus of this paper lays on the group of Albanian migrants who fled to Vienna, and their process of coping/adapting (or not) with this new culture. Respectively, I will concentrate on how children and youth (Muslim) Albanians have impacted their parents’ engagement in Christmas Celebrations in Vienna. Commonly, the participation of these immigrant groups in Christians’ celebrations is a way of showing the dominant host culture their long-term engagement, as well as implies a kind of assimilation or acculturation to the new cultural society. Similarly, Albanian Muslim migrants partake in some Christmas events, which they find inevitable, while avoiding some religiously associated rituals.

Thus, I raise following questions: How do they engage in this festivity and what is their main reason for part-taking? What kind of rituals do they follow (e.g., food preparation, gift giving, decorating a tree, Christmas parties, etc.) and why? How do they cooperate with their different cultural and material surroundings in their new homes?