Life satisfaction among skilled transnational families before and during the COVID-19 outbreak

Abstract

International mobility has radically changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among all types of families, transnational families might have particularly suffered in 2020 during lockdowns that restricted international visits to family members. This paper focuses on the life satisfaction of skilled migrants living in Switzerland before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, we focus on those who live long-distance transnational relationships with other family members. We investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on self-reported life satisfaction using the Swiss Migration-Mobility Survey (MMS). We apply panel analyses using random effects over three waves of the MMS. We found that the COVID-19 crisis negatively affected recently arrived migrants' well-being in Switzerland in 2020. However, migrants in transnational arrangements with children abroad show higher levels of life satisfaction in 2020, in comparison with migrant non-transnational families. When interacted with gender, this improvement of life satisfaction concerns mostly men, while women in transnational partnerships report a significantly lower level of life satisfaction in 2020.