Karlijn Haagsman (R.K.)

Karlijn Haagsman’s research focuses on transnational families and the ways migration, geographical distance and mobility shape family relationships, care and well-being across borders.

A central feature of her work is that she does not focus only on migrants. She studies the different people involved in transnational family life, including children, parents, grandparents, caregivers and other significant relatives. Her research examines how care and support circulate within and between generations, how family members maintain relationships across distance, and how migration affects their opportunities, responsibilities and well-being.

She is particularly interested in transnational parenting, intergenerational care, migrant and stayer youth, family reunification, return migration, and the role of gender and migration policies in shaping family life. Across these themes, she pays attention both to the support that transnational relationships can provide and to the tensions, inequalities and ambivalences they may generate.

Karlijn combines quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods. Her work includes surveys, interviews, participant observation and longitudinal research in Europe and Africa.

Intergenerational care in transnational families

Karlijn’s current research focuses on care circulation and intra- and intergenerational relationships in transnational families. She is particularly interested in how care is exchanged within and between generations and across borders, rather than being provided in only one direction.

Her current project examines visits by parents of adult migrants to their children and grandchildren in the Netherlands. It explores how visiting grandparents contribute to childcare and family life, how they themselves receive care and support, and how these arrangements affect intergenerational relationships and well-being.

The project also examines the tensions and inequalities that may shape these visits, including gendered expectations about care, prolonged co-residence, differences in family and parenting norms, financial resources, housing conditions, and migration and visa regimes.

This project forms part of a broader research agenda on grandparents, extended kin and other significant actors whose roles have often received less attention in transnational family research.

MO-TRAYL: Mobility Trajectories of Young Lives

From 2017 to 2022, Karlijn worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC-funded MO-TRAYL project, led by Professor Valentina Mazzucato.

MO-TRAYL examined how migration and different forms of mobility shape the well-being, education and life trajectories of young people in Ghana, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. The project studied both young people living in Europe and young people remaining in Ghana while one or both parents lived abroad.

Karlijn was primarily involved in the project’s quantitative research. She contributed to the design and coordination of school surveys, data collection and analysis, and the study of how mobility trajectories, changing family arrangements and transnational relationships affect young people’s well-being and educational experiences.

TCRAf-Eu: Transnational Child-Raising Arrangements

From 2010 to 2014, Karlijn conducted her PhD research within the TCRAf-Eu-project on transnational child-raising arrangements between Africa and Europe.

Her dissertation, Parenting across borders: Effects of transnational parenting on the lives of Angolan and Nigerian migrant parents in the Netherlands, examined the experiences of migrant parents living apart from their underage children. It focused on how transnational parent–child separation affected parent–child relationships, subjective well-being, health and employment.

The research combined survey data with insights from qualitative transnational-family research. By comparing parents in transnational and non-transnational families, Karlijn examined the circumstances under which living apart from children had particularly significant consequences for migrant parents and their family relationships.