Previous research on migration and the life course

This section reviews the vast body of research that documents the occurrence and timing of migration and residential mobility with respect to family events, such as childbirth, marriage and divorce. Although these studies did not explicitly address implications for international migrants, they provide some guidance for the analysis of heterogeneous mobility responses to family changes by national sub-groups.

A long tradition of research documents how migration decreases with age and intensifies with higher income and education (Lee 1966 ; Gurak and Kritz 2000 ; W. A.

V. Clark 2013 ; W. A. V. Clark and Dieleman 1996). Human capital theory offers a microeconomic explanation for migration behaviours and the selectivity of internal

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movers. According to that theory, the expected benefits of a move need to outweigh its costs for a migration to take place (Gurak and Kritz 2000). Given that the return on investment from migration depends on human capital endowment, movers and stayers differ importantly with regard to demographic and socioeconomic characteristics.

These attributes also bring opportunities and resources that households can mobilise to overcome the obstacles to migration (Özüekren and van Kempen 2002). The highly educated are more inclined to migrate over long distances given that they are more competitive in the labor market. Wealthier households have more housing opportunities, as well as the financial resources to afford the cost of moving. As such, the human capital model relies on the assumption that households seek the best location to answer their family needs, optimise occupational success and improve their socioeconomic status (Mincer 1978).

Other research pointed out that households do not continuously evaluate their housing options; there needs to be a trigger for an intention to move to be actualised (Mulder 1996). The life-course approach, focusing on parallel careers and emphasizing the timing and sequencing of life events helps understanding the decision-making process of residential mobility. Short-term (family) transitions are embedded in long-term (residential) trajectories, and more broadly in social structures and regional contexts that give them distinctive forms and meanings (Elder Jr 1985). In a housing equilibrium model of migration, it is the shift in family composition that alters housing needs and preferences, and triggers relocation.

It has been known for a long time that married individuals are less likely to migrate than singles, and that increasing family size is associated with less migration (Courgeau 1985; Sandefur and Scott 1981; White, Moreno, and Guo 1995), especially for households with school-age children (Long 1972). As pointed out by these authors, not only does the cost of migration grow with the addition of new family members, but so does the probability of family ties to be severed if migration occurs. Longitudinal data now allows for a temporal assessment of how life events affect the chance of migration and reciprocally. We know from previous studies that family formation is associated with short-term residential mobility and long-term residential stability (Warner and Sharp 2016). Childbirth, marriage, and divorce induce specific regimes of mobility: following the initial residential change, marriage has a strong stabilizing effect;

divorce, by contrast, marks the onset of a period of residential instability, which may

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persist for several years (Bonvalet and Lelièvre 1991; Courgeau and Lelièvre 2006).

These dynamics justify adopting a methodological approach that evaluates both the effect of change (the transition from one status to another) and the family status itself (Mulder and Wagner 1993).

Research on fertility and residential mobility often acknowledges the

“adjustment” perspective whereby fertility affects the demand for housing and leads to residential mobility. In this context, residential mobility is an instrumental behaviour (i.e., an action performed to reach a goal) allowing for the improvement of the housing conditions in terms of size, tenure and location. For instance, adjustment moves at the time of childbirth are known to occur over short distances or towards suburban or rural regions, during pregnancy and shortly after childbirth (Kulu and Steele 2013; Kulu 2008; William AV Clark 2013; Feijten and Mulder 2002; Rabe and Taylor 2010; Charton et Wanner 1998). In a study conducted in the US, Clark and Withers (2009) found migration propensity to almost double in the six months prior to the birth of a child and to decrease gradually thereafter. Transitions to parenthood and homeownership are also tightly knit in the European and North American contexts, and sometimes, the latter is even considered as a condition for the former (Withers 1998; Öst 2012; Mulder and Wagner 1998). However, the possibility to adjust one’s housing situation to a change in family size depends on (economic) resources, (housing) opportunities and constraints encountered during the housing search process. The ability to move upward in the housing ladder strongly depends on the financial resources of the household, as lower-income households are less likely to be able to afford such an adjustment. Financial constraints are even higher in housing markets where mortgages and apartment leases are especially expensive or where there is a housing shortage (Wagner and Mulder 2015). In a study conducted in the UK, Clark and Huang (2003) found an increased mobility rate at the time of childbirth in the national model, but not in the city of London. Kulu and Steele (2013) also found some interesting contextual effects: in larger settlements, residential changes occur more often during pregnancy and shortly after birth, whereas in smaller settlements, couples often move first and then have children. According to these authors, higher prices and housing market tightness make it more difficult to secure appropriate housing before starting a family, if the adjustment is possible at all.

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Marriage affects relocation propensities for both non-cohabiting and cohabiting couples. In the first case, newlyweds either settle together in a new place or one partner moves in with the other (Speare and Goldscheider 1987). In the second case, marriage does not imply a shift in household composition, but may bring new housing aspirations as the couple enters a new phase in the relationship, with a more serious commitment, and possibly the intention of becoming parents (Feijten and Mulder 2002;

Manting 1994). Once again, this situation can be referred to as “adjustment moves.”

Studies have highlighted recurrent patterns in terms of timing and distance for marriage-related migration. Empirical analyses find a positive short-term effect of marriage on relocation (see for instance Coulter and Scott 2015; Morris 2017), with short-distance relocation being more common (Mulder and Wagner 1993). In a study conducted in the Netherlands, Michielin and Mulder (2008) concluded that residential mobility is likely to occur in a short period preceding marriage, which indicates that migration is made in anticipation to these events, thus, acknowledging the importance of anticipation effects in life course research.

Union disruptions have similar short-term effects on mobility since they usually imply that at least one spouse or partner will have to relocate, or even the two, if for instance neither can afford the joint dwelling. Feijten and Van Ham (2007) noticed a long-lasting effect of divorce on mobility, putting divorced individuals on a long trajectory of residential instability. By distinguishing moves due to separation from moves of separated people, Mikolai and Kulu (2018a) reaffirmed this pattern: mobility increases sharply in the first four months following separation and remains above the mobility level of married individuals even three or more years after separation. In another study, the same authors (2018b) analysed tenure changes to homeownership, private and social renting following separation in England and Wales. They found that separated women and men are almost twice as likely to experience a tenure change as partnered individuals. Private renting is the most common transition, with women being more likely than men to transit to social renting. The urgent need to relocate, the diminution of the economic resources and the uncertainty about future partnerships and who they might want to live with in the future often cause a downgrade in the housing ladder (Feijten 2005). Subsequent moves are therefore needed to meet previous housing standards, which in turn triggers an increase in mobility over a long period.

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Immigrant populations have received much less attention from the above life course perspective on housing transitions than the native-born. We could identify only two studies that look at the specific experience of immigrants in this regard. One of these studies was conducted in the US by De Jong and Graefe (2008) and found a positive effect of childbirth, marriage and divorce on the odds of interstate migration.

As for many studies on internal migration in immigrants, the outcome of interest was long-distance (interstate) relocation rather than local residential mobility. Most moves related to family events were therefore not measured in this study, since these moves are usually local. For recent immigrants to Switzerland, Lacroix and Zufferey (2019) found that the odds of migration increased within a one-year interval surrounding the event of marriage but failed to confirm the simultaneous processes of childbirth and relocation. Note, however, that the two studies focussed solely on the immigrant population and did not explicitly account for the difference with natives.

5.4 Hypotheses

Based on previous research on native-born populations and the specificities of the Swiss foreign-born population and housing market, we propose the following working hypotheses. For starters, we expect mobility to increase during the year interval where a family transition occurs, for both native and immigrant populations (H1-elevated mobility hypothesis). However, we expect the strength of this effect to differ according to the person's origin (H2-differentiated mobility hypothesis).

Theoretically, there are good reasons to expect profound differences in life course patterns across immigrant groups (Kleinepier 2016). Mobility responses to changes in family composition are expected to be modulated by a different set of opportunities, constraints, resources and preferences in immigrant and native households. Most research shows that immigrants and ethnic minorities are at a disadvantage in the housing market (Kleinepier, van Ham, and Nieuwenhuis 2018;

Charles 2003; Rebhun 2009). In Switzerland, individuals with foreign-sounding names have been shown to experience discrimination in their housing search process (Auer et al. 2019), thus resulting in lower housing opportunities. What could be called as the

“migrant or ethnic penalty” on the housing market could be particularly acute in the events of a childbirth or marriage when households tend to adapt and improve their housing conditions. This disadvantage may also be exacerbated in a context of intense competition for decent and affordable housing in urban centers, as is the case in

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Switzerland. As a result, we expect “adjustment moves”, that is, residential moves aimed at improving one’s housing situation (or achieving a better fit), to be more difficult for immigrants. This include situations where households have a newborn child or where cohabiting partners get married.

There is also evidence in the literature that ideas about the appropriate timing and sequencing of family-life transitions differ across immigrant groups (Valk and Liefbroer 2007), which in turn might affect the timing of residential mobility in response to (or in anticipation of) family transitions. Different studies find that some immigrants are less prone to cohabit (Pailhé 2015; Kulu and González-Ferrer 2014) compared to inhabitants from European countries where cohabitation is often a way of starting a family (Hiekel, Liefbroer, and Poortman 2014). Therefore, we expect a higher synchronization effect of marriage and residential mobility for immigrants, especially for non-EU immigrants, mainly because of different pre-marital cohabitation habits. If so, differences between groups in mobility propensity at the time of marriage should be reduced once pre-marital cohabitation status is accounted for.

The event of divorce, by contrast, can occur at different points in time - even years - after a separation. Therefore, making sense of this event in a longitudinal framework is not the most straightforward methodological option. For this reason, we explore instead the possibility of a differentiating status effect by origin. Being divorced serves as a marker of residential instability. Divorced individuals are likely to be more flexible and to accept any alternatives or temporary accommodation, such as moving into parents' or friends' homes, even if this means accepting lower living standards (Mikolai and Kulu 2018a). Individuals who experience downgrades in housing and struggle to find an appropriate dwelling are expected to remain residentially mobile over a longer period. Again, we expect immigrants to encounter more difficulties to find an appropriate dwelling, thus resulting in persisting mobility following a divorce.

5.5 Data and Method