Gender, family, and adaptation of migrants in Europe: a life course perspective

Abstract

This volume documents the life uncertainties revealed by migrants' biographies. For international migrants, life journeys are less conventional or patterned, while their family, work, and educational trajectories are simultaneously more fragmented and intermingled. The authors discuss the challenges faced by migrants and returnees when trying to make sense of their life courses after years of experience in other countries with different age norms and cultural values. The book also examines the ways to reconcile competing cultural expectations of both origin and destination societies regarding the timing of transitions between roles to provide a meaningful account of their life courses. Migration is, itself, a major life event, with profound implications for the pursuit of migrants' life goals, organization of family life, and personal networks, and it can affect, to a considerable degree, their subjective well-being. Ionela Vlase is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania. Bogdan Voicu is Professor of Sociology at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania, and First Degree Research Fellow with Romanian Academy, Research Institute for Quality of Life. Chapter 9 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.--