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Socialization, Adaptation, Transnationalism, and the Reproductive Behavior of Sub-Saharan African Migrants in France

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Abstract

Migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) move from a region with high fertility to regions with low fertility. Yet very few studies have examined the reproductive behavior of international migrants from SSA. This study examines the roles of origin and destination socialization on the fertility and fertility ideals of SSA migrants in France. The study draws on measures of assimilation to systematically examine the effects of socialization and adaptation as well as transnationalism for the effects of sustained origin ties. Data are from the TEO (“Trajectoires et Origines”) survey conducted in France (2008/2009). Logistic regression is used to examine current fertility (the odds of having a birth in the preceding 5 years), and poisson regression is used to examine cumulative fertility (children ever born) and fertility ideals (reported ideal number of children in a family). Controlling for sociodemographic factors, first-generation SSA migrants have higher fertility than second-generation SSA migrants and non-immigrants. But first- and second-generation SSA migrants have higher fertility ideals than non-immigrants. Among SSA migrants, first- and second-generation migrants do not differ in fertility and fertility ideals when adaptation is accounted for. Most measures of adaptation are negatively associated with actual fertility and fertility ideals. Transnationalism is associated with higher fertility ideals but less so with actual fertility. The study finds some evidence for origin socialization, but the findings are more strongly supportive of adaptation to the host society. Origin socialization appears to have a stronger influence on fertility ideals than actual fertility.

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Notes

  1. Over 56,000 undocumented SSA migrants are estimated to be in France (Lessault and Beauchemin 2009).

  2. The socialization theory has been referred to by some as assimilation theory; others refer to the adaptation theory as assimilation theory, while others use assimilation refer to both socialization and adaptation (Stephen and Bean 1992; Milewski 2009; Lindstrom and Saucedo 2002). We use the later because assimilation and adaptation are more similar (essentially the same) than assimilation and socialization. However, the variable commonly used to evaluate the effect of socialization (birthplace or generational status), is also a measure of assimilation. Thus assimilation as used in the general migrant incorporation encompasses both adaptation and socialization theories.

  3. The TEO survey was conducted jointly by INED and INSEE. Details on the survey can be found at http://www.teo_english.site.ined.fr/ (in English); and even more details at http://www.teo.site.ined.fr/ (in French).

  4. Details on the sampling methodology at: http://www.ined.fr/fichier/t_telechargement/26218/telechargement_fichier_en_teo.note.eng.pdf, in the codebook for the dataset, and in Beauchemin et al. (2011).

  5. 91 missing cases on migration status (from missing data on birthplace of parents), 381 on education, and 342 on religion.

  6. Preliminary analysis and diagnostics identified the relationship between age and number of children to be curvilinear for the measure of current fertility, so a squared term for age is included in the regressions for that. Income and employment status are not included in the final models because they did not improve the model. Because income is missing on about a third of the observations, multiple imputations was done to check if this might improve its effect, but the results did not differ significantly hence it was excluded from the final models. For the regression with the subset of only SSA migrants, religion, age at naturalization, place of residence of partner, place of early education, a variable for at least one parent born in France and both parents born in SSA, dummy variables for country of birth, and an interaction term for generational status and transnationalism were included in the initial models, but these did not improve the models and so are not included in the final models presented. As seen in the pseudo R 2 values, the models for the regression on fertility are better well specified than those on fertility ideals.

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Acknowledgments

We are indebted to Roger Waldinger and Anne Pebley for their invaluable mentoring, suggestions, and encouragement during the writing of this paper. We also grateful to Gail Harrison, Gilbert Gee, Jennie Brand, Patrick Heuveline, and Goleen Samari for useful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of the paper. PA would like to acknowledge funding support from the Bixby Doctoral Fellowship in Population, the Margaret McNamara Memorial Fund, the UCLA Graduate Division, and the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health for fellowship support during the period of this work, and the Centre Maurice Halbwachs for granting access to the data [Trajectoires et origines (TEO)—version complète—2008: (2008, fichier électronique), INED et INSEE (producteur), Centre Maurice Halbwachs (CMH, diffuseur)].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Community Health Sciences, Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

    Patience A. Afulani

  2. California Center for Population Research, Los Angeles, USA

    Patience A. Afulani

  3. Department of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

    Joseph Asunka

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  1. Patience A. Afulani
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  2. Joseph Asunka
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Correspondence to Patience A. Afulani.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 6.

Table 6 Indicators of transnationalism, Trajectoire et Origines (2009)
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Afulani, P.A., Asunka, J. Socialization, Adaptation, Transnationalism, and the Reproductive Behavior of Sub-Saharan African Migrants in France. Popul Res Policy Rev 34, 561–592 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-015-9360-2

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