Honour related violence could be caused by a collision between tradition and modernity and a power displacement in the family. New research indicates that many girls in families with foreign background can feel that they are living with two different cultures, which are not compatible with each other. My earlier research points out how the changes of power relationship between Iranian parents in Sweden, intensifies gender conflicts after emigration. Moreover, another change in power relationships is between immigrant parents and their children. While the first immigrant generation often has difficulties adapting to the new culture, the children are more easily influenced by new norms. Moreover, tension can arise when the children in certain cases contribute to the socialization of their parents. These conflicts are more intense between fathers and daughters, that is, when both the generation conflict and the gender conflict collide within immigrant families. All this changes the balance of power in the family, which in turn means that when control of important resources changes, the relationships also takes another form. To sum up it can be said that among many immigrant families the men tend to live in the past, women in the present and children in the future. The conflict can in other words be deeper between parents and daughters in families where the parents are living after more traditional and severe norms than society’s modern rules and norms. But, unfortunately, many daughters to immigrants are four-fold oppressed.
First of all, many of them belong to the lower class. They often live with their unemployed or low paid parents in segregated suburbs. These immigrant families have on average worse health and less opportunity to education and a qualified job in comparison to Swedes. Many of them are exposed to ethnical discrimination. They feel depreciated in the meeting with the ethnical majority and experience segregation. They are women oppressed by the patriarchy that exist in the whole society. Unfortunately they often experience a more severe patriarchal environment because of their parents’ cultural luggage, which in its own turn weakens their position and resources of power. Many immigrant girls do, as children and as a part of the new generation, suffer by the parents’ authority. When some of them despite this oppression, dare to challenge the traditional patriarchal culture, the people around them respond with sanctions.