Profiling Mixed Unions’ Assortative Mating in European Countries

As immigration flows to European Union countries increased, the shares of natives partnering immigrants also grew. The partners’ markets changed, becoming more complex and heterogenous given the higher availability of individuals coming from other origins. Therefore, also the assortative mating landscape of host countries changed, becoming more diversified. Research on mixed unions (marriages or cohabitations between a native and an immigrant partner) in Europe has a tradition of at least three decades, but studies applying a multi-country perspective are still lacking. The principal aim of this article is to characterize mixed unions (against homogamous native or foreign-born unions) according to their matching patterns (in terms of educational attainment and employment status). We apply multinomial logistic regressions to data from the European Values Study 2017/2020 allowing to distinguish native and foreign-born respondents according to their partners’ origin. Our findings point out significant differences in educational-assortative mating according to the type of union and the gender of the respondent.