Who Migrates, and with Whom? Coresidential Family Arrangements across Latin American Migration Corridors

Camila Montiel , Centre d'Estudis Demogràfics
Andrés Castro Torres, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Centre d'Estudis Demogràfics
Mariona Lozano, CED, Centre for Demographic Studies

A growing number of children, adolescents and women moved across Latin American and Caribbean countries. This migration is driven by a variety of factors including widespread political, social and economic crises, as well as the differential income-generating opportunities across countries. As a consequence, migration patterns in terms of the demographics of the immigrant population and the routes they take have rapidly become more heterogeneous than they used to be. This paper aims to characterise the coresidence family arrangements of immigrants, examining differences according to their country of origin, destination, gender, and educational attainment. Retrospective data from migration-focused survey projects were used to study ten origin-destination dyads, covering five Latin American origins (Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nicaragua, Peru and Venezuela) and six destination cities (Santiago (Chile); Barranquilla, Cúcuta and Santa Marta (Colombia); San José (Costa Rica); Montevideo (Uruguay). Coresidential family arrangement sequences were constructed based on the country of residence of the informants and the country of residence and birth of their children by year, from five years before migration to two years after the last migration. We use a series of nested multinomial regression models to examine how the origin-destination dyad, gender, and educational attainment correlate with family arrangements. The analysis reveals that the family trajectories of Latin American migrants are complex and subject to frequent change, especially among cross-border corridors. Furthermore, non-border skilled migration tends to be led by people without children. The main factor influencing each trajectory type was found to be the dynamic between the origin and destination.

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 Presented in Session P4. Migration, Migrants, and Mobility