Fertility after Migration in Southern Europe: Romanians and Moroccans in Italy and Spain

Maria Carella , University of Bari Aldo Moro
Alberto Del Rey Poveda, University of Salamanca

The objective of this proposal is to analyze the factors that affect the birth of the first child after migration in two groups of migrants, Moroccans and Romanians, in two countries, Spain and Italy, where there has recently been an increase in immigration. We focus on the period prior to the economic crisis of 2007 to avoid possible interference of the crisis in reproductive behavior. Our study has a double comparative perspective. On the one hand, we compare the reproductive behavior of two groups of migrants, Romanians and Moroccans. These are two groups with very different conceptions of family and different migratory modalities. On the other hand, we analyze the effect of the destination context on reproductive behavior. The analyses will be performed using data for Spain from the "National Immigrant Survey 2007" conducted by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) and data for Italy collected by the ‘Social Integration and Condition among Foreign Citizens’ survey conducted by the Italian Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) in 2011-2012. In the analysis we estimate discrete time survival models to analyze the probability of a birth occurring at any point in time from the moment of arrival, controlling for the main socio-demographic characteristics of migrant women and family conditions upon arrival. The preliminary results show very different reproductive behaviors between the two migrant groups, and in both cases the conditions upon arrival stand out as a determining factor in the reproductive calendar in the destination country.

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 Presented in Session 75. Fertility in Migrant Populations