Older Migrants in Europe Maintain Stronger Ties with Children Than Non-Migrants, Despite Weaker Parental Contact

These persistent intergenerational contact patterns challenge assumptions about migrant family networks.

(December 2025) Family contact is essential for health and wellbeing in later life. Older adults who maintain regular contact with their children receive practical help, navigate healthcare systems more effectively, and experience less loneliness and depression.

Migration patterns tend to change up family structures and the long-term ability of families to maintain ties. Characterising these changes is important, because national care systems rely heavily on family members to care for older relatives in need.

Tracking family connections across Europe

To investigate how migration shapes intergenerational contact, an international team led by Professor Claudia Vogel analysed data from more than 100,000 adults aged 50 and older across 25 European countries, collected in 2017, 2019, and 2021. This period also spans the critical COVID-19 pandemic period, forming an interesting natural experiment of what happens when routes to keeping in touch become blocked off.

Migrants were defined as first-generation, foreign-born respondents currently residing in a SHARE country (regardless of their country of origin). The team examined two key relationships: how often older adults stayed in touch with their adult children, and how often they contacted their own elderly parents.

Strong ties down, weak ties up

Migrants aged 50 and older were more likely to have daily or near-daily contact with their adult children compared to non-migrants. The difference was modest but remarkably consistent, holding steady across all three timepoints and persisting even after accounting for age, gender, education, health, and finances.

At the same time, these older migrants had less frequent contact with their own aging parents than non-migrants did.

Geography shapes care

The pattern points to a practical reality: when you migrate, your children often come with you or follow later. But your ageing parents typically stay behind. Despite smartphones, video calls, and instant messaging, geographic distance still matters, especially for the hands-on, day-to-day help that frail older adults need.

However, this in itself does not explain why migrants see more of their children than non-migrants. The authors propose that migrants may rely more strongly on close family networks because they have less access to the broader social circles – historic school friends, neighbourhood friends, speakers of the same language, longtime colleagues, community groups – that non-migrants can tap into more easily.

Not all families are alike

Some traditional patterns held firm in the data. Fathers aged 50 and above have less frequent contact with their children than mothers did. These findings are consistent with what we see in the literature generally, and most likely reflect traditional gender-specific roles that also shape labour-market participation. Similarly, adult sons reported less contact with their elderly parents than daughters did.

Geography mattered too. In Southern European countries like Italy, Spain, and Greece, people over 50 maintained much more frequent contact with their parents than in Northern European countries like Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. Perhaps cultural norms around family obligations shape these patterns as powerfully as migration itself.

The unfinished picture

The study's definition of "migrant" casts a wide net, grouping together people with vastly different experiences: someone who fled war at 20 versus someone who retired to Spain at 65, refugees versus skilled workers, those who speak the local language fluently versus those who struggle with basic conversations.

These differences matter. Future research will need to untangle how factors like country of origin, reason for migration, age at arrival, and cultural values around family all shape intergenerational contact in distinct ways.

What it means

As Europe's population ages and migration continues, understanding these patterns becomes increasingly urgent. Policymakers designing elder care systems need to recognize that migrant families may face different challenges, and possess different strengths, than non-migrant ones.

The good news? Modern technology may be helping to level the playing field. While physical distance still creates obstacles for practical support, it no longer needs to mean emotional disconnection.

Study by Vogel, C., Tur-Sinai, A., & Künemund, H. (2025). Sustainable Intergenerational Contact Patterns and Health Equity: Comparing Migrant and Non-Migrant Older Adults in Europe. Sustainability, 17(21), 9860.

URL: https://doi.org/10.3390/su17219860