This is the first study to examine the poverty outcomes of international migration through comparisons of three family generations of ‘settler’ migrants spanning multiple destinations, with their returnee and stayer counterparts living in the country of origin. The study investigates group and generational differences in the extent and sources of monetary poverty, based on an adaptation of the resource-based model the author of this book developed originally to examine household responses to poverty (Eroğlu 2011, 2013). As well as tracing the generational trends, it examines and explains the degree of direct transmission on to younger generations of migrants and stayers. The research base for this book is the pioneering 2000 Families Survey, which a) locates male ancestors who moved from Turkey to Europe during the guest-worker years of 1964 to 1971 and their comparators who did not leave their origins, and b) charts their families in Turkey and Europe up to the fourth generation. The Survey led to the creation of the largest database on labour migration to Europe, currently deposited in GESIS (Ganzeboom et al 2016; Güveli et al 2016).

Drawing on this unique dataset, the book develops a multisite and intergenerational viewpoint on migrant poverty with an aim to challenge the dominant thinking about international migration in terms of its (dis)benefits for the destination countries and join the growing efforts to bring the welfare and wellbeing of migrants and their descendants to the forefront of academic and policy agendas. Thereby, it makes a significant contribution to the underdeveloped parts of the international migration literature.

Within this literature, far less research attention has been paid to the poverty of migrants and their descendants beyond their incomes, earnings, wages, benefit claims and educational, employment and occupational status, despite the fact that poverty offers a better standpoint for welfare/wellbeing than any other indicator that accounts for labour market participation or state transfers only. An analysis of migrant poverty provides a vantage point on welfare particularly by a) allowing a focus on those at the bottom of the income distribution, b) encapsulating all individuals independently of their relationship with the labour market and c) capturing the collective contribution of education, employment/occupation and benefits transfers to individual or household welfare (Kazemipur and Halli 2001; Galloway and Aaberge 2005).