Family Influences on Migration Intentions: The Role of Past Experience of Involuntary Immobility

Abstract

The article examines the relationship between past experience of involuntary immobility in a family and the current migration intentions of its members. While family migration experience has been shown to be positively related to migration intentions, the role of past unrealised migration intentions in a family is understudied. Using the case of the former communist bloc, we focus on the migration intentions of people whose family members’ mobility aspirations were stifled by the restrictive political regime. Drawing on data from the Life in Transition III Survey, we show that close relatives of people who had been prohibited from going abroad under communist rule are more likely to report migration intentions compared with people without such family experience. We explain these findings with the intergenerational transmission of mobility aspirations.

The intergenerational transmission of migration capital: The role of family migration history and lived migration experiences

“…Indeed, most people aspire to stay in their places of residence (Debray, Ruyssen, and Schewel 2023). Little is known about the role of lived experiences of migration and family migration history in shaping individuals' aspirations to stay and their realisations of this, although recent evidence suggests that parents' experiences of forced immobility increase the mobility intentions of the next generation (Brunarska and Ivlevs 2022). Thus coupling our theoretical framework of migration capital with the aspiration capability theory (Carling 2002) may provide an effective framework for future research and would contribute to addressing the "mobility bias" that has been argued to permeate current migration research (Schewel 2020).…”

A Generalizable Theory-Driven Agent-Based Framework to Study Conflict-Induced Forced Migration

“…We choose β i = b × B i for an agent where B i is chosen based on the demographic group and family status of the agent based on Table 1 and b is a scaling parameter. These values were chosen based on previous literatures (Castelli 2018;Brunarska and Ivlevs 2022) and consultation with social scientists. Conflict Data: We obtain the conflict information from Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) (Raleigh et al 2010).…”