Abstract
Because of inconsistencies in the reported migration flows and large amounts of missing data, our knowledge of international migration patterns in the Europe is limited. Methods for overcoming data obstacles and harmonising international migration data, however, are improving. In this article, we provide a methodology for integrating various pieces of incomplete information together, including a partial set of harmonised migration flows, to estimate a complete set of migration flows by origin, destination, age and sex for the 31 countries in the European Union and European Free Trade Association from 2002 to 2007. The results represent a synthetic data base that can be used to inform population projections, policy decisions and migration theory.
Résumé
Du fait d’incohérences dans l’enregistrement des flux migratoires et du grand nombre de données manquantes, notre connaissance des schémas de migrations internationales en Europe reste limitée. Cependant, les méthodes disponibles pour surmonter les obstacles liés aux données et pour harmoniser les données sur la migration internationale s’améliorent. Dans cet article, nous proposons une méthode pour combiner les différents éléments de ces informations incomplètes, incluant un ensemble partiel de données harmonisées sur les flux migratoires, afin d’estimer une série complète de flux migratoires par pays d’origine, pays de destination, âge et sexe pour les 31 pays de l’Union Européenne et de l’Association Européenne de Libre Echange de 2002 à 2007. Les résultats constituent une base de données synthétique pouvant servir de base pour les projections de population, les décisions politiques et les théories relatives à la migration.
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Notes
The 27 countries in the EU are Austria (AT), Belgium (BE), Bulgaria (BG), Cyprus (CY), Czech Republic (CZ), Denmark (DK), Estonia (EE), Finland (FI), France (FR), Germany (DE), Greece (GR), Hungary (HU), Irish Republic (IE), Italy (IT), Latvia (LV), Lithuania (LT), Luxembourg (LU), Malta (MT), Netherlands (NL), Poland (PL), Portugal (PT), Romania (RO), Slovakia (SK), Slovenia (SI), Spain (ES), Sweden (SE) and United Kingdom (UK).
The four countries in the EFTA are Iceland (IS), Liechtenstein (LI), Norway (NO) and Switzerland (CH).
The United Kingdom and Cyprus use a passenger survey to obtain information on migration flows. Ireland uses a Labour Force Survey.
The 12 countries with missing data are Belgium, Bulgaria, Estonia, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Lichtenstein, Malta, Portugal, Romania and Switzerland.
In both cases, we used SPSS’s linear regression procedure.
Here, we used SPSS’s log-linear procedure.
Obtained from the Population Reference Bureau’s World Population Data Sheets (http://www.prb.org/).
Obtained from the Global Migrant Origin Database (http://www.migrationdrc.org/research/typesofmigration/global_migrant_origin_database.html).
Obtained from the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database (http://comtrade.un.org/).
We used Excel for this.
We used SPSS’s log-linear procedure for this.
The complete set of results is available at http://www-oud.nidi.knaw.nl/en/projects/230211/.
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Acknowledgements
This study was supported by a European Commission/Eurostat tender no 2006/S100 106607 (OJ 27/05/2006) for the supply of statistical services. The authors would like to thank the other team members of the MIMOSA (MIgration MOdelling for Statistical Analyses) project, and two reviewers of European Journal of Population for their comments and suggestions on our earlier efforts. The estimates described in this article are freely available on the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute’s website at http://www-oud.nidi.knaw.nl/en/projects/230211/.
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Raymer, J., de Beer, J. & van der Erf, R. Putting the Pieces of the Puzzle Together: Age and Sex-Specific Estimates of Migration amongst Countries in the EU/EFTA, 2002–2007. Eur J Population 27, 185–215 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-011-9230-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-011-9230-5