International Migration and Modern Contraceptive Use: A Research Note on Afri can Migrants to France

This research note pres ents a multisited anal y sis of migra tion and con tra- cep tive use by stan dard iz ing and inte grat ing a sam ple of Afri can migrants in France from six West and Central Afri can countries in the Trajectoires et Origines sur vey with a sam ple of women liv ing in the same six Afri can countries in the Demographic and Health Surveys. Descriptive ana ly ses indi cate that the con tra cep tive use of migrants more closely aligns with that of native French women than with that of women from ori gin countries. In par tic u lar, migrants report dra mat i cally higher use of long-act ing revers ible con tra cep tives and short-act ing hor monal meth ods and lower use of tra di- tional meth ods than do women in the countries of ori gin. Although migrants differ from women in the countries of ori gin on observed char ac ter is tics, includ ing edu ca tion and fam ily back ground, reweighting women in the ori gin countries to resem ble migrants on these char ac ter is tics does lit tle to explain differ ences in con tra cep tive use between the groups. Given that con tra cep tive use is an impor tant prox i mate deter mi nant of fer- til ity, our results sug gest that con tra cep tive use should fea ture more prom i nently in the dominant demographic paradigms of migrant fertility.