Time will tell: Ghanaian stayer youth’s changing family reunification aspirations

Stayer youth are common in Global South settings, as parents migrate in pursuit of improved opportunities. Research on the migration aspirations of stayer youth mainly relies on cross-sectional data, treats migration aspirations as static and groups different kinds of aspirations under one category. This limits an understanding of how stayer youth’s aspirations, and specifically their aspirations to reunite with their parents, change over time and how these may or may not entail migration. We examine the factors associated with changing family reunification aspirations amongst school-going Ghanaian stayer youth using four waves of a unique longitudinal dataset (2013, 2014, 2015 and 2019). To gain deeper insights, we also analyse ethnographic data on a sub-set of these youth. The findings show that stayer youth differ in whether and where to reunite and change their aspirations over time. Frequency of remittances, stayer youth perceptions of their living conditions, and the marital stability of their parents explain changes in young people’s family reunification aspirations. This study identifies that change in stayer youth aspirations over time is due to their lived experiences of parental migration, and that family reunification is not only aspired to through migration but also through staying at home.