What Drives Onward Mobility within Europe? The Case of Senegalese Migrations between France, Italy and Spain

Sorana Toma, CREST and Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Economique (ENSAE)
Eleonora Castagnone, Forum Internazionale ed Europeo di Ricerche sull’Immigrazione (FIERI)

Onward mobility – leaving the country of settlement in order to move to a third country - is an under-researched phenomenon which challenges the idea that migration is a one-off event, leading to permanent settlement in the country of destination. Taking advantage of a recent multi-sited survey on migration between Senegal and France, Italy and Spain, this paper examines the drivers of secondary mobility within Europe. We adopt a life-course perspective and analyze, in a discrete-time event-history framework, the ways in which processes of economic, legal and social integration at destination shape subsequent mobility trajectories. Unlike previous studies, we find that Senegalese onward migrants are negatively selected on skills.Furthermore, achieving upward occupational mobility and legal stability retains migrants in their original destination. Last, the paper shows that having ties in other European countries constitutes an important resource in triggering onward mobility, whereas kin and friends at destination discourage it.