Was it all worth it? The consequences of parental migration decisions for the life satisfaction of their descendants

Abstract

Does migration pay off for subsequent generations? This article applies a counterfactual logic (‘what if the parents had not migrated?’) to compare the life satisfaction of descendants of Turkish guest workers in Western Europe and return migrants with that of Turks without a migration history in the family. Using data from the 2000 Families Study, we test a theoretical model that aims to explain differences along three dimensions: personal resources, social position, and normative settings. Results show that only permanent migration was successful in terms of higher life satisfaction for descendants, as offspring of return migrants do not differ from those without a migration history in the family. The higher life satisfaction of subsequent generations in Europe is largely due to access to higher resources obtained through migration, and persists despite barriers such as a lower relative socioeconomic position and experiences of discrimination. While religiosity appears to only play a minor role in explaining differences, there is evidence that descendants whose lifestyle deviates from the normative expectations of the country-of-origin benefit in particular from the migration of their parents.