Foreign population in Lombardy: reproductive behaviors and migratory strategies

Salvatore Strozza, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
Giuseppe Gabrielli, Università degli Studi di Bari
Eleonora Mussino, Istituto Nazionale di Statistica (ISTAT)
Anna Paterno, Università degli Studi di Bari
Laura Terzera, Università degli Studi di Milano - Bicocca

The main goal of this work is to study the propensity to have one or more births in Lombardy for foreign women. Assuming that the fertility of foreign women is associated with their migration and marital history, and there is interdependency in the timing between the different events, it is therefore a necessity to use a method that takes duration of stay and marriage history into account, which is the reason why it is important to apply a life course approach. First, we provide descriptive statistics and a non-parametric analysis: the transition to the first and second birth is studied using Kaplan-Meier survival curves. Second, we study the impact of socio-demographic variables on the risk of having a first and second birth using the Discrete Event History model. The data are from the 2010 yearly survey from the Regional Observatory on Integration and Multiethnicity in Lombardy. This is an ongoing project implemented by ISMU Foundation. Primarily results show as the risk of having the first child is lower before the migration and it faster catch up after the movement, we interpreted as interrelation of events and not disruption because it happen right after the migration. We did not found indicator of adaptation during the time but strong impact if the partner is Italian. Clearly there is a socialization effect: different behaviours by citizenship, but considering that all the women have already with a partner, the first child is a universal norm so the differences are more in the timing. We expect the frequencies of second birth will be different. The results will be available in time for the EPC meeting.