Euro-commuting Motives, Decision-Making, and Gender

Abstract

This chapter examines respondents’ motives for Euro-commuting. It shows how a three-part typology of Euro-commuters emerges from my sample, namely, those I term “survivors”, “thrivers”, and “strivers”. Each type or category is distinguished by their principal motivation for Euro-commuting. Survivors undertake this mobility primarily for livelihood purposes; thrivers for the sake of optimizing lifestyles; strivers, finally, do so in the service of upward career mobility. Further, this chapter demonstrates that Euro-commuting is sharply inflected by gender too — in particular, a threatened but robust male-breadwinner identity propels many respondents into this mobility. They fear this breadwinner identity would be jeopardized by remaining sedentary.