The impact of changes in the marital status on return migration of family migrants

Many migrants have non-labour motives to migrate, and they differ substantially from labour migrants in their migration behaviour. For family migrants, the decision to return is highly influenced by changes in their marital status. Using administrative panel data on the entire population of recent family immigrants to the Netherlands, we estimate the effect of a divorce and remarriage on the hazard of leaving the Netherlands using a ‘timing of events’ model. The model allows for correlated unobserved heterogeneity across the migration, the divorce and remarriage processes. The family migrants are divided into five groups based on the Human Development Index (HDI) of their country of birth. We find that both divorce and remarriage increase return of family migrants from less-developed countries. Remarriage of family migrants from developed countries makes them more prone to stay. Young migrants are influenced most by a divorce. The impact of the timing of a divorce and remarriage on return is quantified graphically.