Do residents of French overseas departments (DOMs) who migrate to mainland France turn to selective French pro-migration programs for migration assistance?

INED researcher Marine Haddad used data from a 2010 French survey called “Migration, Families, and Aging” to study migration behavior while considering migrants’ socioeconomic resources. Her analysis focused on children aged 15 or over of respondents born in one of the four French overseas departments or regions (DROMS) included in the survey: Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana, and Reunion. The study did not include children who migrated but not to mainland France, migrated before age 15, or return migrants. The sample came to 13,440 individuals, either children of survey respondents who never left the DROM they were born in or respondent children living in mainland France at the time of the survey. While over 20% of them were residents of mainland France, only 10% reported having received selective French pro-migration program assistance.

The probability of an individual migrating without receiving public pro-migration program assistance rises with the number of that individual’s siblings who migrated without such aid; conversely, the higher the number of siblings who migrated without assistance, the less likely that individual is to migrate with the help of such aid. The same phenomenon is observed in the opposite case: the probability of an individual migrating with assistance rises with the number of that individuals’ siblings who migrated that way; conversely, the more of their siblings migrated with such aid, the less likely that individual is to migrate without assistance. This can be interpreted as an effect of imitation within family networks, namely by following sibling advice: siblings relate their own migration experience as a positive one and indicate to their brother or sister how to proceed as they did.

Parents’ educational attainment level and socio-occupational category increase the probability of an individual migrating, but their effect interacts little with the effect of sibling migration. For non-assisted migration, siblings’ migration paths do not vary either by parents’ educational attainment or by their occupation or job(s). In the case of publicly assisted migration, the finding is more complex: the positive effect of having siblings who migrated to mainland France with public mobility program assistance is much higher among individuals whose parents’ educational attainment is relatively low; however—and this is a more surprising phenomenon—that positive effect is greater among individuals whose parents belong to a relatively high social-occupational category. These variations are difficult to interpret and would seem to reflect the complexity of the mechanisms involved in making use of available public assistance, mechanisms that involve knowledge of the system, administrative and educational resources, and potentially negative representations of receiving assistance. 

Source: Marine Haddad, Sibling infuence on migration pathways from the French overseas to mainland France, European Sociological Review, Volume 40, Issue 4

Contact: Marine Haddad

Online: December 2024