Deferred right of soil: Sibling variation in preferred burial locations among immigrant families in France

• In Event: International Migration Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 10. Immigrant integration/assimilation

Abstract

Existing research on burial preferences has focused primarily on first-generation migrants, treating burial location as either a marker of assimilation or a final expression of homeland attachment. This article extends that scholarship by examining burial preferences among the adult children of immigrants in France and by introducing birth order as an axis of intra-family variation. Drawing on nationally representative data from the Trajectoires et Origines 2 (TeO2) survey, I estimate multinomial regression models predicting preference for burial in France, in another country, or no stated preference. The results show that burial preferences vary systematically by birth rank within larger immigrant families (three or more children). Later-born siblings are significantly more likely than firstborns to prefer burial in France, whereas firstborns tend to prefer burial abroad. These associations persist net of parental language use, childhood visits to the parental homeland, and citizenship status. These findings contribute to research on immigrant incorporation by demonstrating that attachments to origin and destination countries are unenly distributed within families. In doing so, this paper extends prior work on sibling-based acculturative differentiation to the domain of posthumous preferences.

Author

• Rachel Rammal, McGill University