Modeling American Migration Aspirations: How Capital, Race, and National Identity Shape Americans’ Ideas about Living Abroad

Abstract

Recent scholarship proposes a “two-step” approach for better understanding mechanisms underlying the migration process, suggesting we study migration aspirations separately from migration behavior and that the one does not always translate directly into the other. Research on aspirations, however, concentrates on the Global South, despite growing migration flows originating in the Global North. Here, we fill this gap, drawing on a nationally representative online survey we commissioned in 2014 in the United States. Bivariate analysis shows that fully one-third of Americans surveyed reveal some aspiration to live abroad, a plurality of those primarily for the purpose of exploration. Multivariate analysis suggests that certain elements of cultural and social capital, including the networks Americans have with prior and current US citizen migrants, structure these aspirations, in tandem with strength of national attachment. Further, both cultural and economic aspects of class, alongside race and national attachment, shape where American aspirants envision going and why. While the existing literature addresses the motivations and profile of American migrants already living abroad, ours is the first study to examine Americans’ aspirations prospectively from the point of origin, thereby connecting the literature on Global North migration flows to that on migration aspirations.

‘Sometimes you gotta get out of your comfort zone’: retirement migration and active ageing in Cuenca, Ecuador

“…This section attends to the shadow of a fourth age, one which motivates a search for more intense and meaningful experiences in a third age of activity. This cultural code in relation to ageing helps produce an imaginary of transnational migration ( see also Benson, 2012; Marrow and Klewkoski von Koppenfels, 2020).…”

How families affect aspirational migration amidst political insecurity: The case of Hong Kong

“…While quantitative methods allow us to establish relationship among political factors, migration intention, and familial roles, interviews with respondents enable us to look closely at the micro‐dynamics of pre‐migration decision making (cf. Marrow & Klekowski von Koppenfels, 2020). This enriches our understanding of how their protest experience and political beliefs shape their aspirations to move or stay.…”

“…We argue that their responsibilities as parents-especially their concerns about children's future-could strengthen aspirational migrants' anxiety about their homeland's political realities, pushing them to strategise emigration. Parental anxiety about political realities not only shape their ideas about whether or not to relocate, but also orient them to assess what emigration-and different destination societies, if they have choices-mean for their children's future (Marrow & Klekowski von Koppenfels, 2020). Parents who are dissatisfied with the government and perceive low political efficacy might be more likely to migrate.…”

“…We examine the intention to migrate, not actual migration, since we focus on residents of the sending region. Locating our research on potential migration and from the point of origin reflects hopes, plans, and real struggles involved in people's decision (Marrow & Klekowski von Koppenfels, 2020). Analysing such intentions allows us to capture their struggles while circumventing the bias resulting from ex‐post rationalisation of their decision to migrate (Etling et al, 2020).…”

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“…Even so, those from the Global North are not, for the most part, regarded as migrants in the mainstream literature (although see, e.g., Weinar, ; Marrow and Klekowski von Koppenfels, ). They are systematically removed from the “migrant” category and referred to, instead, as “expats” or, indeed, a plethora of other terms, but above all, seen as mobile individuals who are not migrants – mobile non‐migrants.…”