Kinship among natives and foreign-born: future forecasts of non-European migrant family composition in Sweden

Kin are an important source of support and care in modern societies, yet research on older people's kinship in high-income countries has often neglected migrants. Due to globalization, the number of migrants of retirement age is rapidly increasing. However, their cross-border kinship networks complicate their access to everyday care in old age. Consequently, a problem arises: who will care for these older migrants? In addition, migrants from the global South are poorer, resulting in a double burden, having both limited social and financial resources. Our study uses microsimulation to forecast the kinship networks of native-born and foreign-born individuals in Sweden. We combine micro-level data on a complete population for whom we measure their income and kinship networks with population forecasts. We take the 1965-1978 cohort and examine their kinship availability in the country of destination as they age up to 100 in 2078. We examine differences by country of origin and income. We find that migrants are much more likely to be kinless in the future, and even likely to be both kinless and have low income. For some kin types, such as siblings, the difference between natives and non-natives is dramatic.