Many studies have shown that young males of Turkish descent are disadvantaged in terms of educational opportunity in Germany. In this, the lower educational successes of children from migrant families are neither simple effects of lower levels of social capital nor of lower educational aspiration. With the aim of tracing unexplained mechanisms of the intergenerational transmission of educational chances, the interdependency of educational success or failure of young men of Turkish descent and adolescent processes of detachment and family relations were reconstructed using an intergenerational research design. This shows the major importance of parents' processing of their immigration experiences in the context of discrimination and disadvantage, the effects of this on the parent-child-relationship, especially in adolescence, and the impact of intergenerational dynamics on the realization, processing and effects of differing educational aspirations and careers.