Parenting from Abroad: Transnational Separation from a Child and Mental Health Among Immigrants in France

Abstract

Restrictive immigration policies, financial concerns and/or cultural preferences often lead families to separate across borders in the migration process. This transnational family separation, which often lasts years, can potentially have long lasting negative consequences on migrant parents’ mental health. Qualitative research has documented that transnational parents often report feelings of guilt, sadness and loneliness due to the separation, and that financial or legal precarity can exacerbate these feelings. On the other hand, quantitative research on this topic is scarce, mostly based on relatively small samples and on cases studies of single origin groups in single destination countries, has measured transnational parents’ mental health disadvantage using less than ideal control groups, and has not investigated potential long-lasting consequences of separation after reunification. In this article, I contribute to this literature using data from the French survey Trajectoires et Origines 2 to investigate differences in propensity to have experienced depression symptoms between transnational immigrant parents, parents who migrated with their children, and immigrant parents who reunited with their children after a period of transnational separation. I additionally look at heterogeneities by gender, age of the children, legal status, employment, and partnership dissolution. I find that transnational parents have significantly worse mental health than immigrants who migrated with their children, especially when the separation involves young children. The mental health of formerly transnational parents does not differ significantly from that of parents who migrated with their children, suggesting the absence of lasting effects of separation after reunification.