Marriage Migration and Divorce Risk in Sweden

This study aims to analyze whether immigrant couples in which one partner is marriage migrant (transnational endogamous couples) differ from immigrant couples who met locally (local endogamous couples) with respect to divorce risk. The data are drawn from the STAR compilation of Swedish registers and cover the time period between 1990 and 2012. The unit of the analysis is the married couple. Eight immigrant groups are included into the analysis, i.e. the foreign-born originating from the former Yugoslavia, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Middle East, Southeast Asia, Poland and Chile. Separate multivariate analyses are carried out for each of these groups. Multivariate analysis is based on piecewise constant exponential model. In order to remove a possible effect of convenience marriages on divorce risk in transnational couples, having common children is considered an indicator of a committed relationship. The results of the main model show that, as compared to local endogamous couples, transnational couples have an elevated divorce risk in all eight groups if the importer is a woman. The patterns are more complex when looking at transnational couples with a male importer.