Partnership transitions among the children of immigrants in Norway: The role of partner choice

Abstract

The family life courses of immigrants and their descendants have been widely studied as indicators of societal integration. But largely absent are investigations into the role of cohabitation in the family lives of these subpopulations. Using Norwegian register data on individuals who were either native born or who immigrated before age 18, we analyse the formation of first cohabiting and marital unions. Next, we compare associations between endogamous or exogamous partner choice and transitions from these first unions. Results showed that the children of immigrants were less likely to cohabit endogamously, but overall more likely to cohabit exogamously and to marry than Norwegians without a migration background. Endogamous migrant-background cohabiting unions were least likely to dissolve, whereas cohabiting couples involving one or two majority partners were less marriage prone than endogamous migrant-background couples. Similarly, among those married, endogamous migrant-background couples were less likely to divorce than their exogamous counterparts.

Keywords:

• first union
• partner choice
• endogamy
• exogamy
• marriage
• cohabitation
• union transitions
• union dissolution
• children of immigrants
• Norway

Notes

1 Please direct all correspondence to Kenneth Aarskaug Wiik, Statistics Norway, Research Department, PO Box 8131 Dept., NO-0033 Oslo, Norway; or by E-mail: [email protected]

2 Kenneth Aarskaug Wiik and Lars Dommermuth are both based in the Research Department at Statistics Norway. Jennifer A. Holland is based at the Department of Public Administration and Sociology, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

3 This research was supported by the Research Council of Norway under Grant number 250486 and the Swedish Research Council under grant number 2014-1668. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America and at the Research Seminar at Statistics Norway. The authors would like to thank participants at these meetings, as well as Marianne Tønnessen and Kjetil Telle, for useful comments and suggestions.