Family patterns of immigrants and their descendants in the UK Dr Júlia Mikolai and Professor Hill Kulu have been studying the interrelationship between partnership and fertility trajectories of immigrants and their descendants in the UK. They have found that family patterns have remained relatively stable across migrant generations and birth cohorts. Here we take a closer look at some of the emerging research from the MigrantLife project.
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n many European countries, the share of immigrants and their descendants has increased. In the UK, for example, the share of foreign-born individuals has grown from 8 per cent of the population in 2004 to 14 per cent in 2019 (Office for National Statistics, 2019). Demographic research on immigrant families in Europe has also grown significantly over this period. Whether immigrants exhibit partnership patterns similar to the native-born, and whether and how partnership patterns differ across migrant generations, have become key questions of this research. Previously, studies have analysed partnership changes and fertility separately, but in their recent study, Dr Mikolai and Professor Kulu have used a multistate event-
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history approach, which allows for the joint analysis of repeated partnership and fertility transitions and the incorporation of different ‘clocks’. No previous study has been done in this way. The findings show that partnership and fertility behaviors among European immigrants and their descendants are similar to that of natives (defined as UK-born with two UK-born parents): many live together first and then have children and/or marry. Those from South Asian countries tend to marry first and then have children. Women from the Caribbean region have the most varied partnership and fertility patterns: some have births outside unions, some form a union and have children afterwards.
