Life paths of migrants: a sequence analysis of Polish labor migrants’ family-life trajectories

Tom Kleinepier, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI)
Helga A. G. de Valk, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) and Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Ruben I. van Gaalen, Statistics Netherlands

In the past decade intra-European migration has become more and more important. The Polish migration is an example of this large and growing group of immigrants in Europe including the Netherlands, for which not much is known yet. Using unique panel data from the Dutch population registers, we apply sequence analysis to explore and describe the variety of family life-courses among young adult (aged 20-30 at migration) Polish labor migrants in the Netherlands (N = 5,355). Each individual family-life career is followed for a period of five years on a monthly time base. Optimal matching analysis is applied to compute (dis)similarities between individuals, in order to group them into predominant life paths. A series of logistic regression analyses on the acquired typology shows a strong impact of partner origin for the type of union and likelihood of return migration. Furthermore, men are more likely to remain single and to leave the Netherlands, while women more often cohabit.