Abstract
The share of young adults who have parents with a migration background (2nd generation) or who migrated as children (intermediate or 1.5 generation) is increasing in societies across Europe. Patterns of family formation in the 1.5 and 2nd generation are increasingly attracting attention of academia and policymakers because of the potential impact they may have on future demographic trends in Europe. This impact will differ, however, depending on whether the 1.5 and 2nd generation retain distinctive patterns of family formation with respect to timing of parenthood and number of children, or whether patterns of family formation in migrant populations can be expected to converge to those in majority populations. Research on family formation in general populations has shown that lengthening educational trajectories and variation in labour market opportunities induced by economic cycles have strongly affected the number of children and particularly the timing of parenthood. In contrast, the literature on migrant fertility to date has largely focused on development of appropriate indicators and changes over subsequent generations, whereas the association between economic cycles and fertility in migrant populations has not been addressed, let alone variation of this association across origin groups and migrant generations. Considering the differential labour market opportunities available to migrants and natives, theories of migrant fertility give rise to conflicting hypotheses on whether patterns of family formation in the 1.5 and 2nd generation can be expected to converge to natives, which have remained largely untested.
Given these gaps in the literature, this project uses unique longitudinal microdata from Belgian social security registers to i) study variation in the association between economic cycles and family formation in the 1.5 and 2nd generation in Belgium around the Great Depression (2005-2017) across origin groups and migrant generations, and ii) determine the extent to which differential labour market opportunities and employment instability at the individual, couple and household level mediate this association. The project considers four levels of analysis. First, the project considers how the association between aggregate economic indicators and family formation varies across origin groups and migrant generations. Second, the project analyses how differential employment stability at the individual-level mediates the association between economic cycles and family formation across origin groups and migrant generations. Third, the project considers couple dynamics to determines whether partners accumulate labour market precariousness, or whether compensation takes place between partners. Fourth and finally, given the higher prevalence of multigenerational and extended households in specific migrant populations, the project analyses whether households buffer or exacerbate the effect of individual employment instability on the number of children and timing of parenthood through processes of accumulation or compensation.
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