Residential relocations and housing changes among immigrants and their descendants: an analysis of longitudinal register data from France

This paper investigates residential mobility and housing changes among immigrants, their descendants, and the native population, alongside the association between family and household characteristics and residential mobility. We apply discrete-time event history analysis to rich French administrative panel data covering the period 2012–2019. The results show distinct patterns of residential moves among migrant groups and generations. Immigrants from North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa are less likely to move to homeownership and more likely to move to social renting compared to the native French population. By contrast, immigrants from Southeast Asia, Turkey, and Europe have a similar likelihood of moving to homeownership as the native population. We find little differences in the probability of moving to homeownership across migrant generations; however, the second generation appears less residentially mobile than the immigrant generation. The descendants of immigrants from North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa are the least likely to move to homeownership and the most likely to move to social renting. This suggests that either structural barriers or cultural norms shape the mobility patterns of immigrants and their descendants in the same way. Finally, we observe similarities in the association between household characteristics and residential mobility for migrants, their descendants, and the native population. This suggests that life course events play a similar role in residential mobility across all population groups. For migrants and their descendants, those with low socioeconomic resources move less, suggesting that a lack of resources is a determinant of low mobility.