The course of love in the migration process: Germans in Israel, and Israelis in Germany

Love, to a significant other, can be the motivation for migration, inform a migration trajectory, or provide reasons for remaining in situ. Even so, love remains in the undercurrents of migration research. It is not explicitly addressed, even though it underpins migration within the constellation of arranged marriage, or if the pursuit of love is limited by social structures, or law. This paper links the dynamics of agentic love and self-initiated migration by way of German (non-Jewish) and Israeli (Jewish) migrants in Israel and Germany, respectively. It highlights individual trajectories of love migrants, establishing that love within the area of migration studies needs to be conceptualised as multifaceted and complex, at times contradictory, and as part of an affective trajectory of the migration process; and that the ability to follow up on falling in love, and to actualise love, cannot be unhinged from privilege. •Love is introduced as a key driver of self-initiated, agentic migration.•Love is characterized as more than an upset to socio-legal structures, which dominate research on intercouples in the Global North.•It challenges the notion of ‘free love’, and underlines the importance of social class.•German/Israeli history and present is related to as an ‘intimate history’ and ‘intimate present’, respectively.•The individual characters highlight the complexities of capturing love, as well as the dynamics of love over time.