Abstract
Recent research suggests that the increasing complexity of family life could be a factor in declines in internal migration (long-distance moves within countries). As many separated parents continue to share childcare responsibilities or have visiting arrangements, their mobility is naturally constrained. However, the relationship between family complexity and individual migration behaviour has never been studied explicitly. We compare separated parents with parents in two-parent families in their likelihood of migrating within the Netherlands. We use detailed records of parents’ partnership status and children’s residential situation. An event-history analysis was performed using register-based population data (N = 442,412). We find that separated, single parents are more likely to migrate than those in two-parent families. The same is true for repartnered mothers, while repartnered fathers are about as likely to migrate as fathers in two-parent families. Separated parents’ migration behaviour depends on where their children live. Having non-resident children who live some distance away is associated with a much higher likelihood of migrating than having resident children or non-resident children who live nearby. Having both resident and non-resident children who live nearby—shared residence (i.e. joint physical custody) is likely common in this situation—is associated with a considerably lower likelihood of migrating than having resident children only. Based on our findings, one would expect family complexities stemming from parental separation to be associated with higher rather than lower levels of migration. However, potential future increases in the number of parents who share physical custody after separation might lead to lower migration levels.
Highlights
It has been suggested that the increasing complexity of family life may be a factor in the reported declines in internal migration, i.e. long-distance moves within national borders1 (Cooke et al, 2016; Thomas et al, 2017a); such declines have been observed around the globe (Bell et al, 2018)
We focus on long-distance moves because of the large impact these have on one’s daily life in both work and family spheres—migration usually involves a change of workplace and, in this case of separated parents, might involve a change in children’s residential arrangements
In 2013, 22.2% of parents opted for shared residence at the time of divorce, compared with 70.4% opting for children living with the mother and 7.4% opting for children living with the father (Poortman & van Gaalen, 2017)
Summary
It has been suggested that the increasing complexity of family life may be a factor in the reported declines in internal migration, i.e. long-distance moves within national borders (Cooke et al, 2016; Thomas et al, 2017a); such declines have been observed around the globe (Bell et al, 2018). A limited body of literature has addressed spatial mobility in the years after the initial event of separation, and some of these studies extend to include repartnering, but not children’s residential situation (Feijten & van Ham, 2007, 2013). The distances between members of former families tend to increase when one or both parents repartner (Stjernström & Strömgren, 2012; Thomas et al, 2017a, 2017b) These different literature strands have addressed important dimensions of post-separation mobility, with some studies suggesting a negative effect of family complexity on mobility, no previous study has dug deeper to explicitly explore the relationship between family complexity and internal migration. Migration propensities are strongly age-dependent, and the parents who form our study population are of an average age at which long-distance moving is considerably less common than among younger adults (Kooiman et al, 2018)
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