Research on intercultural dialogue has traditionally focused on communication between visibly differentiated cultural groups, often overlooking the everyday intercultural negotiations occurring within migrant families. This paper addresses this gap by exploring intergenerational dialogue within UK-Chinese migrant families through the concept of intergenerational interculturality. This paper conceptualises intergenerational interculturality as the dynamic process through which migrant parents and their children negotiate identities, values, family practices, and understandings of self and other in relation to their own cultural sense making.
Drawing on a qualitative doctoral study involving five UK-Chinese migrant families, this paper analyses multilingual, individual, and group interviews conducted with one migrant parent and one UK-raised adolescent child from each family. Adopting a non-essentialist small cultures approach, the study moves beyond fixed understandings of ‘Chinese’ and ‘British’ culture to examine how participants themselves draw upon, negotiate, and make sense of broader cultural narratives within everyday family interactions.
Findings demonstrate that parents and children frequently framed intergenerational differences through binary understandings of ‘Chinese’ and ‘British’ culture when discussing issues such as identity, education, marriage, and values. However, closer analysis reveals more fluid and complex negotiations shaped by migration histories, generational positioning, and lived experiences rather than fixed cultural categories alone. The paper argues that intergenerational interculturality provides a valuable lens for understanding the nuanced dialogic processes occurring within migrant family relationships. In doing so, the paper contributes to dialogue studies by extending understandings of intercultural dialogue into the intimate and often overlooked space of migrant family life.