We use cookies to provide you with the best possible website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site, as well as cookies used for anonymous statistics, comfort settings, or displaying personalized content. You can decide which categories you want to allow. Please note that depending on your settings, some features of the website may not be available.

Cookie settings

These necessary cookies are required to enable the core functionality of the website. Opting out of these cookies is not possible.

cb-enable
This cookie stores the user's cookie consent status for the current domain. Expiry: 1 year.
laravel_session
Stores the session ID to recognize the user when the page reloads and to restore their login session. Expiry: 2 hours.
XSRF-TOKEN
Provides CSRF protection for forms. Expiry: 2 hours.
IZA Discussion Paper No. 6852
September 2012
The Impact of Divorce on Return-Migration of Family Migrants
Govert Bijwaard, Stijn van Doeselaar

revised version published as 'The Impact of Changes in the Marital Status on Return-Migration of Family Migrants' in: Journal of Population Economics, 2014, 27(4), 961-997

Many migrants have non-labour motives to migrate and they differ substantially in their migration behaviour. Family migrants main migration motive is to join their future spouse. Thus, when their relation breaks down this influences their return decision. Using administrative panel data on the entire population of recent family immigrants to The Netherlands, we estimate the effect of a divorce on the hazard of leaving The Netherlands using the "timing-of-events" model. The model allows for correlated unobserved heterogeneity across the migration and the divorce processes. The family migrants are divided into three groups based on the Human Development Index (HDI) of their country of birth. We find that divorce has a large impact on the return of family migrants from less developed countries and less on the return of family migrants from developed countries. Young migrants with low income are influenced most by a divorce. We find some evidence of marriage for convenience for migrants from less developed countries. The impacts are quantified by graphing the impact of the timing of divorce on the return probability.

Communications
Mark Fallak
mark.fallak@liser.lu
+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
Network Coordination
Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

The IZA@LISER Network is a global community of scholars dedicated to excellence in labor economics and related fields, now coordinated at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) following its transition from Bonn.

About IZA@LISER Network
Contact
IZA Network (Current Site Operator):

Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)
11, Porte des Sciences
Maison des Sciences Humaines
L-4366 Esch-sur-Alzette / Belval, Luxembourg

IZA Institute (In Liquidation):

Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH i. L.
Schaumburg-Lippe-Str. 5-9, 53113 Bonn. Germany
Phone: +49 228 3894-0 | Fax: +49 228 3894-510
E-Mail: info@iza.org | Web: www.iza.org
Represented by: Martin T. Clemens (Liquidator)