International migrations and modern means of transportation and communication make it easier for people to meet, and to tie and maintain relationships across borders and national origins. The rising attention to family migration and reunification as the main entryway into Europe has been associated with greater interest in migrants- immigrants in particular – and in migrant and migrant-native families and couples. Long overlooked, migrant women are now established subjects of research, yet the (re)production of gender hierarchies and inequalities throughout and as a result of migration remains in the background of migration studies, especially when formulated in quantitative terms.

This PhD research is a comparative study of migrant and migrant-native couples’ trajectories and gendered dynamics in France and Britain. Starting on a critical examination – historical and political – of survey data on migrants and migration in both countries, it investigates the difficulty and the necessity of considering migration as a gendered experience of mobility – that is, not simply who migrates, or how many migrates, but how people migrate, with whom,and at what point in their life. Using Understanding Society and Trajectoires et Origines data, the research models and weighs in the complex imbrication of migration in the life course through sequences of migration and family formation, which it ultimately connects to patterns of paid and unpaid labour division between partnered women and men. How do trajectories of ‘global love’ affect gender relations and under what conditions of gender, class, race? What does this say about nation-states, as border states and welfare states?