People with a migration background in Germany exhibit a strongly elevated risk of poverty. The causes frequently being discussed cannot sufficiently explain the difference from the poverty risk in the autochthonous population. In particular, processes of poverty transmission from generation to generation have so far remained opaque, thus missing the peculiarities of migration experiences when set in the context of intergenerational networks. The paper investigates how families’ situations and relationships as well as orientation patterns linked to them contribute to the intergenerational transmission of poverty and what influence the migration background exerts on this. This is exemplified by refering to the case of a family with a Turkish migration background, supplemented by results from the overall sample of the study. As can be shown, the experiences of disadvantage resulting from poverty and migration have each individually a restrictive effect yet are also amplifying each other—which makes it more difficult to develop the alternative patterns of action necessary for escaping poverty. The parents’ reflection on of migration decisions and their own migration experiences prove to be particularly relevant for the transmission of poverty over the course of generations.