Importance of Family in Migration

Families play a crucial role in migration and settlement decisions, and in longer-term integration. Decisions to migrate, settle or return are typically made as part of a household unit, taking into account the welfare of the family as a whole. The presence of partners, children and parents can also make a huge difference to how migrants fare in their country of destination, often facilitating integration in health and social systems, education, housing and local communities. However, migration can also create a range of financial, social, and cultural pressures for families, which can put strains on relationships and family life, undermine the well-being of children, and limit the capacity of all family members to flourish. These challenges can also stem from poorly designed migration policies, which often produce impediments to keeping families together and to supporting their integration. It therefore matters a great deal how host countries design and implement policies to support migrant families.

Sociological and anthropological studies of migration have demonstrated the central role of family relations, responsibilities and ties in decisions relating to migration. As Eleonore Kofman notes, ‘the decision to migrate is seldom the product of individual decision-making; its timing is closely related to the family life cycle and major events in the life-course of the first and second generation of immigrants, and not necessarily understood as a direct response to labour market opportunities’ (Kofman 2004: 248-9). The importance of life-course has also been highlighted in demographic research exploring the interplay between family change and migration (Kulu and Milewski 2007). Power relations and hierarchies within the family relating to different family members’ roles and responsibilities play an important part in determining who can move, when and how, often leading to highly gendered and age-specific trends in migrant cohorts (Bonizzoni 2009: 83). This means that regardless of whether individuals migrate alone, households move together, or family members migrate in sequence, families are often involved in making decisions, which are driven not only by economic considerations but also by social, cultural and emotional expectations and aspirations.

Explanatory frameworks premised on the push-pull hypothesis tend to overemphasize the role of the individual in the migration process. Critics of this perspective argue that the decision to migrate is based on group experience, in particular, the costs and benefits to the family. Rather than being an isolated calculation, an individual's decision to migrate is conditioned by multiple social and economic factors. For example, a member of a rural family may be motivated to migrate if urban employment translates into the diversification and amelioration of the family economy, or if rural productive resources are not enough to sustain an extended family. Such out-migration probably would not occur if it was likely to produce an economic deficit for the family unit. Apart from this, the decision to migrate is not calculated from an exclusively economic standpoint. An individual can have an economic opportunity in another place, but not take it up if their departure would cause emotional hardship in the sender community. In Sarah Harbison's words, the family "is the structural and functional context within which motivations and values are shaped, human capital is accrued, information is received and interpreted, and decisions are put into operation" (1981, p. 226).

The family is the crucial agent of an individual's capacity and motivation to migrate. Harbison argues that the complexities of the family structure characterize the migration process because the family unit mediates between the individual and society, and thus it can prioritize its needs over the individuals in many instances. Three factors give the family unit significant importance in the migration process (Harbison 1981; Boyd 1989).

1. Because migration requires resources for transportation and to establish a new home, family support is paramount, especially because most migrants are young and lack sufficient personal savings to finance a move. In most cases, the family unit is the essential unit of economic production and thus determines the allocation of resources to individuals and specifies economic roles. Apart from the economic needs of the family, differential access to family resources and the social division of labor have important implications for individual mobility. The socio-economic framework of the family can facilitate or restrict migration. In a situation where males control family resources, and females are assigned strict domestic roles in the division of labor, women's mobility will be structurally limited or at least determined by men.
2. The family is the primary socializing unit. Through the framework of kinship, customs, values, social obligations, and the like, the family unit conditions the individual to fill a basic role in society. For example, in societies where migration is crucial for the putative well-being of the group, patterns of socialization will develop to prepare certain individuals to migrate. The primogeniture system—under which real estate passes to first-born sons—assisted the mobility of later-born sons because they were often provided education or military placement instead of inheritance.
3. The family is an enabling economic and social network. The geographic dispersion of kin members partially determines the migration destination. Many people move to where they have family members (rather than where economic opportunities are most fruitful) because they can be relied upon to provide food, shelter, and information, which help them cope with their new environment. The presence of kin will also reduce the psychological impact of culture shock through the perpetuation of old customs in the new place. For these reasons, ethnic groups have tended to concentrate in specific regions and neighborhoods.

Harbison (1981) points out that while the family's function as a subsistence unit, agent of socialization, and support network shapes the motivations and incentives for migration, these are also conditioned by sociocultural factors, such as marriage rules and kinship rights. Of particular importance is the gender division of labor. For the most part, migration studies have been gender-blind, and this obviously has serious implications from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective. Many studies (Bjerén 1997; Chant 1992; Kelson and DeLaet 1999) have shown that women's migration experience is fundamentally different from men's. Because gender is a primary organizing principle of the family and society, it follows that gender structures the migration process to a significant degree.

Studies of networked migration have shown the significant role that both immediate family and wider networks of extended family, friends and acquaintances can play in facilitating subsequent moves, both practically and psychologically, as ‘pioneer’ migrants reduce some of the uncertainties involved, providing information and practical support to new migrants. Moreover, for certain social groups and/or sending locales (countries, regions or sometimes towns and villages) the ubiquity of migration experiences can lower cultural and social barriers to migration as it becomes an ‘expected’ feature of life (Kõu et al 2017). Networks should not however be seen as automatically forming, or as leading to an ongoing flow of increased migration. Work on migration systems has shown that over time, a combination of positive and negative experiences and consequences of migration can feedback into decreasing patterns movement and settlement (De Haas 2010).

The importance of families in migration decision-making have also been increasingly recognised in economic theories of migration. Neoclassical economic models have traditionally treated migrants as individual decision-makers, maximising utility by making rational choices driven by a combination of largely economic push and pull factors in sending and receiving countries (Massey et al 1993; Sjaastad 1962; Todaro 1976). However, the theoretical neatness of these models has been at odds with the empirical evidence of migrant behaviour (Abreu 2010: 10; Boswell 2008), not least in relation to the importance of families and wider social networks in influencing decisions to migrate (Mincer 1978). New Economics of Labour Migration theories sought to bridge this gap by acknowledging the role of households in decision-making (Massey et al 1993). Such theories also recognise the incompleteness of information available to potential migrants concerning economic conditions in both sending and receiving contexts, which might undermine ‘rational’ decision-making (Stark and Bloom 1985; Stark 1991). This new set of theories therefore paid attention to the ways in which migration decisions are deeply influenced both by concerns for and needs of other family-members and by the transfer of information and provision of support through migrant networks.

Family decisions on migration are also deeply influenced by policy frameworks for migrant workers. The clear-cut categories of family formation, family reunification and accompanying family members defined by policy often become blurred from the perspective of the migrant families, and how they themselves manage and experience migration. Moreover, rights and opportunities across these categories can vary within tiered migration systems. Those moving through more highly skilled routes to longer-term and better-paid posts are more likely to be supported by employers who often provide family relocation packages and support to assist with the practical aspects of a move (Ryan and Mulholland 2014: 257). This assists families to plan moves in line with policy categories and to put their plans into practice in relatively straightforward ways, based on fuller knowledge of the consequences for a range of family members. For example, Kõu et al’s study of highly skilled Indian migrants moving to the UK or the Netherlands, found that consideration of a spouse’s future prospects for employment and career progression played an important role in migration choices and decisions for this group of migrants.