Migration research in life course perspective

This article analyses the features of applying a life course perspective in migration research. On the basis of migration theories and of the interaction between factors promoting international migration and problematic questions of life course perspective, the author presents a theoretical approach suitable for analyzing processes of international migration and of the integration of migrants. This approach allows the theoretical and empirical factors that describe these processes to be viewed through the lens of problematic questions about life course perspectives, questions relating to human action, social ties, the context of migration with respect to time and space, and the chronology of life events. On the one hand, these questions reveal the interaction between pre-immigration and post-immigration situations. On the other, they not only permit an analysis of contemporary societies’ stages of mobility (motives for migration, trajectories of integration), but also enable both to characterise the relationship between stages of migration and to reveal the peculiarities of any given stage in the general context of migration