The intercultural competence of second-generation individuals: knowledge gaps and steps forward

Second generation individuals (SGIs) represent an increasingly important share of the growing European population. Most literature focuses on the difficulties experienced by SGIs, risking reinforcing popular constructions of SGIs as a problematic group. Examining the potentials of SGIs may help to create a more balanced representation of their social reality and highlight opportunities inherent in multi-ethnic societies. In this paper we suggest that SGIs upbringing amongst multiple cultures may, under certain conditions, favour their developing strong intercultural competence (IC), a vital resource in contemporary, highly diverse societies. Following a literature review, we highlight that the IC of SGIs remains largely unexplored and there is a need for further research to investigate its features and the factors fostering and hindering its development. We begin by defining IC and the approach we adopt to view the construct, and by characterizing SGIs and the main critical implications and potentials of their growing up within multiple cultural environments. Subsequently we unite the contributions of migration studies and the body of work on IC in order to explain the processes by which SGIs likely develop IC. We propose the need for investigation of the IC of SGIs, making the case that research on IC should acknowledge the distinctiveness of SGIs experience and therefore utilize specific conceptual and methodological tools to explore the features and development processes of their IC. The paper ends with a discussion of the remaining knowledge gaps and by setting out an agenda for future research on the IC of SGIs.