The reunification decision among Congolese and Senegalese couples separated because of migration to Europe

Our understanding of the main drivers of the process of families’ separation and reunification due to international migration remains quite limited. In spite of the numerical importance of annual entries on family grounds to developed countries, as well as the frequent legal reforms affecting the migrants’ right to reunify, adequate data to empirically examine this issue are still scarce. The few quantitative analyses available so far utilize data on migrants collected only in the receiving countries. By omitting migrants who returned home to reunify with their relatives there, the results of these studies are likely to be seriously biased. The main goal of this paper is to analyse the process of couples’ reunification among Congolese and Senegalese migrants in Europe, taking advantage of the international structure of the MAFE dataset. The comparative approach allow us to better understand when and why some migrants decide to reunify with their partners in Europe, while others remain separated until they return to their countries of origin.