Participative Immigrants or Participative Cultures? The Importance of Cultural Heritage in Determining Involvement in Associations.

This paper uses insights from the literature on social capital and from the sociology of values to explain dependency of immigrants' involvement in associations depend on the norms of participation in their country of origin as well as the norms of their host countries. The argument is that changing the social context should lead to changing participative behaviours. I use cross-classified multilevel models on the EVS 2008 data to test if average levels of participation in the host and in the origin society determine immigrants' propensity to become member in voluntary organizations. The findings point to a partial assimilation of immigrants. Their behaviours, while influenced by their culture of origin, are mainly shaped by their country of residence. The relation is influenced by the differences between the patterns of participation in the two cultures, the age when migrating and the dependency of the origin on remittances.