Point of Reference: A Multi-sited Exploration of African Migration and Fertility in France (WP-20-09)
Julia Behrman and Abigail Weitzman
Considerable literature explores whether the fertility of migrants from high fertility contexts converges to levels of women in lower fertility destinations. Nonetheless, most research compares the reproductive outcomes of migrants to those of native-born women in destination countries. Drawing on literature that takes a transnational perspective, the researchers standardize and integrate data collected in France (the destination country in our study) and data collected in six high-fertility African countries (the senders). Through descriptive and multivariate analyses with entropy weights, they show that there is much more evidence of migrant fertility adaptation in the first generation when migrant women are compared to women in origin countries rather than destination countries. The authors also discuss and analyze the role of selection into migration and disruption of family formation processes upon migration to provide a fuller understanding of processes surrounding migrant fertility.
This paper is published in International Migration Review.