Legal status and immigrants’ fertility in Italy: Investigating previous undocumented histories
While competing hypotheses explaining migrants’ fertility behaviour have been recurrently offered, there is a substantial lack of knowledge on the role of undocumented experience as a contextual barrier in shaping international migrants’ family formation processes. We investigate, using the Italian survey Social Condition and Integration of Foreign Citizens containing retrospective information on immigrants’ legal status, how irregularity among immigrant women intertwines with the timing of the first childbirth and the total number of births occurred in Italy. We find that irregular experience – as a time-dependent process – delays the transition to childbirth and reduces completed fertility post-migration, with few possibilities to catch-up over the life-course. Findings suggest long-lasting effects of irregular status and the potential disruption of migrant’s fertility induced by migration policies, admission systems, and regulation factors. The reduced possibility of legal entry channels and lack of migration policies for planning and managing migration into Italy may thus have an impact on family formation trajectories among international immigrant women.
Intervenant
Rocco Molinari is post-doctoral research fellow at the Department of Statistical Sciences, University of Bologna. He obtained the Phd in Economic Sociology and Labour Studies at the University of Milano and previously worked as research fellow at the Department of Sociology and Social Research (University of Trento). His research interests include the socio-economic integration of international migrants and, more recently, family dynamics and socio-cultural integration of immigrant couples and second generations. He is currently part of the GESI project, which investigates the interrelation of geographical inequalities, internal migration, and individual life-course patterns in Italy.