Marriage has not been, historically, a major reason for people to
migrate across borders. Instead, most people migrate for economic reasons
in search of land, a better job, or more opportunity. In recent decades,
there has been increased international migration for family reasons to
reunite with emigrant kin, to seek refuge from violence, to escape famine
and natural disaster or simply to retire to a sunny paradise.
Historically, if marriage was the reason to migrate, most unions
would have occurred between migrants of the same nativity,
strengthening family ties and reinforcing trans-national networks between
countries of origin and destination. As we have seen in some migrant
communities in Europe and America, often international migrants favor
marriage with individuals from their country of origin. This is a
common pattern of first and second generation Moroccans and Turks in
Western Europe (Cottrell 1973; Cretser 1999; Lievens 1999; Glowsky
2007; Niedomysl et al. 2010), as it was a century ago with Italians,
Greeks and many other ethnicities in the United States (McCaa 1993;
McCaa et al. 2005)