Growing up in motion: migration and transition to adulthood among female immigrants in Spain

Natalia Genta, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales-Sede Ecuador
Victoria Prieto Rosas, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Transition to Adulthood (TA) defines youth as a stage in which youngsters acquire several adult roles. For those aged to experience these changes migration represents an occasion to switch the scenery of these transitions increasing opportunities to achieve their goals. Both phenomena have a similar age-specific distribution in the range of 20 to 35 years old, which leads us to talk about an age-congruity between both. Which are the events that have already happened by the time of migration? How do the TA events predict the age at migration? How does age at migration predicts the age of other TA events? It is possible to observe among migrants the same trend of postponement and enlargement of TA duration that has been registered for non migrants? Using data from the Family, Fertility and Values Survey carried in Spain in 2006 we will describe the mainstream sequence of events defined by first cohabitation in a union, first job, completion of schooling, entry into parenthood, leaving parental home and migration. The population group of concern is the women that immigrate into Spain between the ages of 20-30 years. Comparisons may be stated considering them against Spanish females of the same cohort that did not migrate. Special attention would be paid to the events of TA that took place before and after migration, computing the time distance among them for those that have completed TA. Other descriptive measures of incidence and spread in time of TA will also be considered. Distances between sequences will be computed using Optimal Matching Analysis to continue the analysis with cluster method for classification of different life courses. In addition, to model the age at each event of TA considering some individual characteristics as covariates (region of origin, age at migration, cohort) we will perform Cox Proportional Hazard Models.