The Stability of Interethnic Unions among Immigrants and Their Descendants in France

Ognjen Obucina , Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)
Ariane Pailhé, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)

Using the data from the new TeO2 survey, we aim to explore the patterns of (in)stability of interethnic unions among immigrants and their descendants in France. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first French quantitative study looking at the separation risk in interethnic unions. We define interethnic unions as unions between an immigrant or a second-generation descendant of immigrants on the one hand, and a native person or a person of a different foreign background on the other. The descriptive analysis is based on Kaplan-Meier survival analysis, whereas discrete-time logistic regression is used in the multivariate analysis. Our results show that exogamy is associated with an increased separation risk, both among immigrants and second-generation descendants of immigrants. This result is particularly pronounced among immigrant women and second-generation men. On the other hand, co-ethnic unions between one immigrant partner and one second-generation partner do not show a higher separation risk, as compared to endogamous unions between two immigrants or two second-generation partners. The study also explores whether the increased separation risk in interethnic unions can be explained by partner differences with respect to other dimensions of social affiliation. We find that the lower stability of interethnic unions may be partly explained by religious differences between the partners.

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 Presented in Session 91. Marriage and Unions of Migrant Populations