Temporary Migration and the Level and Timing of Childbearing – Analysis in the Low Fertility Context

Weronika Kloc-Nowak , University of Warsaw
Agnieszka Fihel , Institut national d'etudes démographiques / ICMigrations

While most studies on migrant fertility so far have covered immigrants from less developed and high fertility countries to Western and, more recently Northern Europe, this ongoing study fills the knowledge gap by addressing less studied mobile groups (migrants from low fertility countries, return migrants) and a new country of immigration in Central Europe: Poland, with its low fertility context. The presented project, instead of focusing on single direction moves, concerns the whole spectrum of mobility forms including permanent migration, return migration, and temporary mobility. The analysis consists of a systematic quantitative analysis of the fertility patterns of the mobile population in Poland. As for Polish returnees and emigrants’ families, we will estimate the level of fertility based on the Labour Force Survey (LFS) microdata. As for immigrants in Poland, not sufficiently grasped in the Polish LFS, we will conduct a secondary analysis of Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) surveys from 2015-2019 and conduct another RDS survey among nationals of Ukraine living in Poland for over 1 year. Based on this data we plan to investigate fertility patterns of mobile persons shortly after and during temporary migration periods. The innovative character of the study consists of addressing methodological problems related to fertility measures, and including a whole variety of mobility forms, in particular temporary labour migration. By analysing these so far underexplored cases and types of flows we expect to refine our understanding of migrants' fertility beyond the patterns established in typical immigration destinations, thus responding to the existing knowledge gaps.

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 Presented in Session P1. Postercafe