“I Will Go with You”: Partners of Graduate Students as “Tied-Movers”

Orly Clerge, Brown University
Gabriela Sanchez-Soto, Brown University
Jing Song, Brown University

The Graduate Student Partners Project (GSPP) presents results from interviews with men and women who are the tied-movers of graduate students in a Northeastern private university. Our main interest is to understand the dynamics of tied migration, specifically the process of decision making. According to our findings, the partners of graduate students have to deal with a variety of issues as they negotiate their joint move along with their educational and career trajectories. Studying graduate student partners provides the opportunity to observe an interesting but understudied group of individuals. This project also contributes to the study of tied migration and work trajectories in a way that is not widely covered in the literature. Moreover, this study contributes to the understanding of couples’ interactions and their individual and collective coordination in the context of migration for professional and personal advancement.