ABSTRACT This paper contributes to the growing field of inquiry that investigates migrants’ subjective well-being by analysing the role of income, relative to two reference groups: natives and other migrants. Using data collected by the European Social Survey from 2002 to 2018, we constructed two measures of economic distance to compare each migrant’s economic situation with that of natives and other migrants with similar characteristics. Our results indicate that when the disadvantage between the migrant and the reference groups becomes smaller, eventually becoming an advantage, the migrant’s life satisfaction increases. Such relationship is stronger when migrants’ income is examined relative to natives than when compared with migrants’. This suggests that upward comparison is more important than downward comparison for migrants’ subjective well-being. We also show that the relationship between relative income and subjective well-being is stronger for second-generation migrants and for those with more formal education. Finally, we show that subjective measures both at the individual (feelings about one’s own economic condition) and societal (feelings about the national socio-economic-institutional condition) levels moderate the relationship between relative income and subjective well-being.

ABSTRACT This paper addresses the impact of COVID-19-induced uncertainty on union formation intentions in Italy. We acknowledge that decisions made in uncertain conditions rely on personal narratives of the future, that is socially-constructed contingent plans for achieving a personal imaginary. The data come from an on-line survey experiment carried out during the final week of lockdown in Italy on a sample of 1,846 individuals in a romantic relationship (cohabiting or living apart together). Our findings suggest that narratives of the future have a causal effect on marriage intentions: expectations of a long wait before the return to pre-pandemic conditions negatively influence marriage intentions. On the other hand, cohabitation seems more compatible with the uncertainties of today's world. The present study gives a prominent role to the future in family formation practices, net of more ‘traditional’ factors that have been considered in the literature on family life courses.