Love boats: family formation and migration histories in Lombardy

Giuseppe Gabrielli, Università degli Studi di Bari
Laura Terzera, Università degli Studi di Milano - Bicocca
Salvatore Strozza, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
Anna Paterno, Università degli Studi di Bari

Recent literature has shown that the “ways” and the “timings” to form and enlarge a family are very different. In the case of migrants the process of family formation depends on the ways and timings of migration event as well. For these reasons, the aim of this paper is to apply “life histories” approach, in order to highlight the role of migratory experience in the process of composition/recomposition of the family among immigrants in Lombardy, the Italian region where the foreign presence is widest and most deeply rooted. The used data comes from the ORIM survey, sponsored from 2001 by the Lombardy region and the ISMU Foundation, that took place in 2010 on a representative sample of 8,033 foreigners older than 14 years at the interview and coming from countries with high emigration levels. We provide detailed descriptive analysis of the familiar and migratory picture of the interviewees; a sequence analysis (concerning family/migratory dynamics) is included in this section as well using event history techniques. We apply multivariate analysis, namely discrete-time logit models, in order to identify the main determinants of the transition to union formation and to family reunification in Italy. We pay particular attention to the effect of the gender, the area (or country) of origin and the age of migrants, together with the interactions among them. The preliminary results obtained show that among the others, the origin from very traditional countries has a vital role on the formation of the families of the observed immigrants.