Transnational migration, health and well-being: Nigerian parents in Ireland and the Netherlands

Abstract

The phenomenon of families separated across continents is a result of migratory flows in a globalised world. Transnational families occur because one or both parents migrate internationally requiring children to be raised in transnational child-raising arrangements, with the help of caregivers. This study examines the health and the emotional well-being of Nigerian migrant parents living in Ireland and the Netherlands, using comparative analyses based on a survey of close to 300 migrant parents in each host country. Half of the sample in each country is living in transnational families the other half are not. This paper adds to the existing literature on transnational families by including control groups (migrants who are not separated from their children) and comparing migrant parents from the same origin country who live in different host countries, allowing us to identify the significance of migratory context and legal regimes in shaping the emotional well-being and health of parents. The results indicate that the factors that drive the health and emotional well-being of migrant parents are not solely related to their separation from their children but rather to other mediating variables such as legal status, socio-economic status, and the normative contexts. While Nigerian child fostering norms ease the influence of separation in both contexts, separate analyses of the Irish and the Netherlands sample show the more pronounced consequences of the mediating factors in the Irish sample, highlighting the differences in the migratory trajectories of Nigerian parents in Ireland and the Netherlands.