Balancing move and work: Womens labour market exits and entries after family migration

A substantial literature has examined the nature of mobility and migration and the link to workforce participation. In general that literature has documented the disadvantages to women who move or migrate with a partner during the mobility or migration process, but it suggests, especially for the US, that the disadvantage is temporarily limited. This study of the same process in the British labour market reaffirms a temporary deficit-effect of two-worker migration for women, but unlike the US labour market the process of re-entry seems slower. There are modest monetary gains from mobility and migration, but these gains come for some families only when women enter the labour force after migration. The study reconfirms the importance of gender in the migration and mobility processes. Income, for women, recovers more slowly if a birth was registered in the migration interval. Copyright (c) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.