Reunifying and separating : an analysis of residential arrangements of migrant couples in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

This paper offers new evidence on the residential arrangements of couples in the context of migration and urbanisation in Africa, focusing on the case of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso's capital city. We use a mixed-methods approach, combining data from a survey on the family histories of migrants merged with data from the Ouagadougou Health and Demographic Surveillance System and qualitative interviews. The objective is to analyse how the migrants themselves perceive "living apart together", the extent of this phenomenon, its timing, and the factors influencing it. The longitudinal nature of our data specifically allows for the study of the drivers of couple reunification in Ouagadougou and of the physical separation of partners, whereby one goes to live away from Ouagadougou. Our results reveal that 25% of migrants in a union had a partner living outside Ouagadougou in 2015, and that the residential arrangements of such couples were associated with gender relations, family cycle, and integration into the city