Family migration in a cross-national perspective: The importance of institutional and cultural context

Vidal, Sergi; Perales, Francisco; Lersch, Philipp M.; Brandén, Maria

doi:10.4054/demres.2017.36.10

Cited by 26 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…Defining “far away” using a threshold of 50 km is common in migration studies in Sweden (Malmberg & Pettersson, ). Also, country‐specific Kernel distributions for Sweden, Australia, Great Britain, and Germany reveal that migration rates level off between 40 and 60 km across these different countries, which corroborates the validity of a 50‐km threshold for defining long‐distance migration (Vidal, Perales, Lersch, & Brandén, ). To ensure the validity of this approach, we have elaborated using other measures of the distance between the applicant and the job applied for.…”

Section: Design Of the Correspondence Testsupporting

confidence: 66%

Can the trailing spouse phenomenon be explained by employer recruitment choices?

Brandén

Bygren

Gähler

2018

Population Space and Place

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It is well known that couples tend to relocate for the sake of the man's career rather than the woman's, also known as the “trailing spouse phenomenon.” The role of employer choices in this process is unknown however. If employers are hesitant to make job offers to women who live a long way from the workplace (e.g., because of work–family balance concerns or a perceived risk that they will not follow through on their applications, or stay hired if employed), this tendency might constitute an underlying mechanism behind the moving premium of partnered men. Ours is the first study to empirically test whether employers prefer geographically distant men over geographically distant women. We sent applications for 1,410 job openings in the Swedish labour market, randomly assigning gender and parental status to otherwise equivalent applications from cohabiting or married women and men and recorded employer callbacks to these. The results indicate that employers in general tend to disfavour job applicants who live a long way from the employer's workplace. This tendency is stronger for women, both for mothers and for women with no children. Our estimated effects are imprecise but clearly suggest that employer recruitment choices contribute to the trailing spouse phenomenon by offering men a larger pool of geographically distant jobs. We call for more research on this hitherto ignored mechanism behind the trailing spouse phenomenon.

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Section: Design Of the Correspondence Testsupporting

confidence: 66%

Can the trailing spouse phenomenon be explained by employer recruitment choices?

Brandén

Bygren

Gähler

2018

Population Space and Place

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“…But dual-earner couples migrated less often when at least one partner worked in a managerial or professional occupation. The authors interpret this finding as support for the idea that Swedish women are more likely to influence family migration decisions (Vidal et al, 2017).…”

Section: The German Contextmentioning

confidence: 52%

“…Therefore, we might expect that German women are more likely to move in favor of their husbands' career, while this is less likely to occur in more gender-egalitarian countries, such as Sweden. This idea has been supported in a comparative study of Sweden and Germany (Vidal et al, 2017). The study revealed that in Germany, male-breadwinner and dual-earner couples with a male partner working in a managerial or professional occupation displayed comparatively high migration rates.…”

Section: The German Contextmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…Prior research finds that women are more likely to move compared to men at the start of coresidence in Sweden (Brandén & Haandrikman, 2019) and in other studies about gendered moving patterns within families (Fan & Huang, 1998) (although differences were not very large). Moreover, in Germany family migration seems to be driven more by the man's employment and position than the woman's (Vidal et al, 2017). We therefore expected that moving at the start of coresidence would also be more likely among women than men in Germany.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

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The Transition to a Coresidential Partnership: Who Moves and Who Has the Partner Move In?

Krapf

Mulder

Wagner

2021

Popul Res Policy Rev

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Moving into a joint household is an important step in the process of union formation. While a growing body of literature investigates differences between those couples who start coresidence and those who do not, we know little about the likelihood of moving upon the start of coresidence. The aim of this paper is to investigate how individual and couple-level characteristics are associated with moving, or having a partner move in, at the start of coresidence. We use data from 10 waves of the German Family Panel pairfam for those who started coresidence (n = 983) and estimate logistic regression models of moving versus having a partner move in. The respondents in the sample are quite young with a mean age of 27. For long-distance relationships, those with a higher level of education than their partner and women who were living in close proximity to their parents were less likely to move. In short-distance relationships, respondents living in the parental home or in crowded housing were more likely to move than those living in uncrowded housing. In contrast with previous research, we did not find that women were more likely to move than men. Our results highlight that factors like educational resources, housing demands, and local family ties have differential effects on moving decisions at the start of coresidence depending on the distance moved.

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“…Household income was included as an indicator for financial resources that facilitate moving behaviour (Mulder & Hooimeijer, 1999). The female partner's contribution to the household income was included, because dual-earner couples tend to be less mobile than male-breadwinner couples (Vidal, Perales, Lersch, & Brandén, 2017) and because more gender-egalitarian or female-dominated working arrangements have been shown to be overrepresented in (central) cities (De Meester et al, 2007). The educational attainments of both partners were accounted for, because the higher educated are consistently found to be more spatially mobile (Faggian, Corcoran, & Partridge, 2015).…”

Section: Actual Moving Behaviourmentioning

confidence: 99%

Residential mobility of couples around family formation in the Netherlands: Stated and revealed preferences

Kooiman

2020

Population Space and Place

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Despite ongoing debates on urban resurgence and suggestions that cities have become more popular as a location to raise children, empirical evidence on the extent to which families with children tend to stay in cities is scarce. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap by analysing intentions to move and the actual mobility behaviour of young families in the Netherlands. First, and based on administrative data from Statistics Netherlands (2008-2016), it provides a detailed geographical analysis of couples' actual moving behaviour around the life event of first childbirth in a wide array of settlement types. Results demonstrate that the transition to parenthood still triggers couples to move down the urban hierarchy: urban couples, especially those in high-density neighbourhoods, tend to leave the city, whereas couples in smaller municipalities outside the city tend to adjust their housing situation by local moves. However, lower density neighbourhoods in inner cities are relatively successful in retaining couples around family formation. Second, and based on the Netherlands' Housing Survey linked to administrative data, this paper examines geographical variations in families' stated intentions to move and analyses the likelihood that these moving intentions are realised. Results suggest that patterns of family migration cannot merely be interpreted as revealed preferences for suburban or rural environments. Whereas urban families are more likely than non-urban families to have intentions to leave, they are also most likely to intend to move within their settlement. However, Amsterdam families in particular are unlikely to fulfil their intentions to make a local move, probably because of housing market constraints.

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Family migration in a cross-national perspective: The importance of institutional and cultural context

Cited by 26 publications

References 49 publications

Can the trailing spouse phenomenon be explained by employer recruitment choices?

Can the trailing spouse phenomenon be explained by employer recruitment choices?

The Transition to a Coresidential Partnership: Who Moves and Who Has the Partner Move In?

Residential mobility of couples around family formation in the Netherlands: Stated and revealed preferences

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