Fertility of Immigrants: Patterns of Family Formation around Migration of Immigrant Women in Belgium

Leen Marynissen , University of Antwerp
Karel Neels , University of Antwerp
Jonas Wood , University of Antwerp

The rapid increase of new migration after 2000, characterized by a diversification of motives (e.g. family migrants) and origin groups (e.g. non-European migration), increasingly impacts fertility. Available research demonstrates that family formation is often concentrated in the years immediately following migration, in particular among women who migrated for family reasons. However, this phenomenon has also been shown to inflate age-based period measures of fertility in migrant groups, leading to an overestimation of the impact of immigration on fertility. As a result, using exhaustive individual-level census and register-data for Belgium and hazard models, this paper adopts a life course approach to family formation among women with a first generation migration background by distinguishing family transitions that took place before and after migration. At the same time, this study considers migration motive, the age at immigration, duration since immigration, as well as variation in the interplay of these characteristics with varying economic and policy contexts. Our findings will help to assess the impact of family formation among first generation migrant women on aggregate fertility trends. In the following steps of the project this paper is a part of, the model specifications developed in this study will be integrated into a dynamic microsimulation framework that allows to simulate life courses around family formation in order to understand how shifts in individual life course transitions shape aggregate fertility trends.

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 Presented in Session P1. Postercafe