FAMILY TIES: HOW FAMILIES OF ORIGIN AND PROCREATION INFLUENCE WOMEN’S MIGRATION AND INTEGRATION

Women's migration is an increasingly important focus of interest in understanding the family-level factors shaping individual and family-level migration decisions. Utilizing interviews with 30 immigrant women residing in Utah who migrated to the US at three different ages (childhood, young adulthood, and later adulthood), I ask: “How do familial relationships impact the immigration experience for women in the US, and how does this vary by age at migration?” I find that family significantly shapes women's migration decisions and experiences post-migration for women of all ages, but this influence has subtle differences based on their age at migration. Women who migrated as children often have little or no say in their migration, migrate with family, and express a sense of responsibility to honor their parents’ migration hopes through their post-migration achievements. For women who migrate as young adults, their migration decisions are shaped by their family of origin and by the hopes they hold for the families of procreation they hope to create in the future. And for women who migrate in later adulthood, who often already have families of procreation, their migration decisions and integration experiences are grounded in their hopes and desires for their children’s futures and their children’s ability to belong. Through this analysis, I show how family ties, hopes, and expectations shape migrant women’s experiences in meaningful, but also meaningfully different, ways throughout the life course.