Project description

Internal migration (long-distance moves within national borders) is generally assumed to be beneficial to individuals and households. This FamilyTies project has been designed to make a decisive contribution to a much more comprehensive explanation of internal migration and its labour-market outcomes than current, mainly economic, explanations have achieved thus far. It introduces a novel perspective on internal migration and immobility, which focuses on the role of family outside the household in deciding on whether and where to relocate, and which takes into account contemporary family complexity: the family ties perspective. The aim is to identify the role of family ties in internal migration, immobility and labour-market outcomes. The objectives are:

1. Identifying the role of family ties as a deterrent of migration and key determinant of immobility
2. Explaining migration towards family in relation to migration in other directions
3. Determining to what extent and for whom family-related motives drive migration and immobility
4. Unravelling how individual labour-market outcomes of migration versus immobility differ between (im)mobility related to family ties and (im)mobility due to other factors

Geo-coded register and census data containing micro-links between family members are used for Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium, as well as survey data for Sweden, the Netherlands, the UK, the USA and Spain. These are analysed using advanced applications of hazard regression, logistic regression, and linear regression models, which take into account the multilevel and multi-actor structure of the data and issues of endogeneity and self-selection when necessary. The team has also done some work based on in-depth interviews. The project provides major new insights into migration, immobility and individual labour-market outcomes, and input for better predictions and policies concerning migration, population growth and decline, ethnic segregation, labour-market flexibility and family support.