This paper examines and compares patterns of ethnic safeguarding across the generations in three Danish spaces in the US Midwest. Investigating the extent to which ‘Danishness’ has continuously been practised and preferred among descendants of the Danish immigrants who settled there at around the turn of the 20th century, it argues that there is a variety in the level to which Danish ethnic identity has historically been safeguarded in the three spaces. Consequently, this is echoed by variations in the extent to which later generations of immigrants seem to have relinquished Danishness as the defining part of their identities. The interviews indicate that a late 19th century dispute within the Danish church in America regarding the relation between religion and ethnicity, manifested in self-perceptions and life practises among Danish American families, echoed through the generations and impacted the acculturation processes to this very day.

In recent years, a body of research has aimed to 'de-demonise' distance in transnational family lives, arguing that transnational families compensate for physical co-presence with other means of caring and 'being there' for each other, particularly by way of new information and communication technologies (ICTs). Although many researchers claim to study transnational families, they mostly study the relationships between ageing parents in 'home' countries and the migrant son or daughter overseas. In this article, I propose to broaden that scope to include generations further apart too. In analysing how and why Danish migrant parents work to transmit their Danish culture and language to their children settled in Australia, I argue that geographical distance continues to matter, not least to the relationships between grandparents and grandchildren separated by this distance but also due to the complicated relationship between migrants and parents which is fostered by separation.

This article explores the ethnic practices and self-perceptions of later generations of Danish immigrant descendants in the USA and Argentina. Through investigating their involvement in ethnic organisations and expressions of self-identification, it engages in a concurrent debate on how ethnicity appears in those, perhaps, final stages. The comparison between later generation ethnics in the two countries shows remarkable differences, despite similar backgrounds and comparable generational stages. The study also shows, however, that possibilities for exploring ethnicity seem crucial to later self-identification. Ultimately, therefore, this seems to play a central role in defining the contours of the acculturation process through the generations.