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State of the Art and Future Challenges of Interregional Migration Empirical Research in Europe

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New Frontiers in Interregional Migration Research

Part of the book series: Advances in Spatial Science ((ADVSPATIAL))

Abstract

In this chapter, we review the long-standing debate on the main determinants of interregional migration in light of the most recent advancements in Europe. Given the vast amount of empirical studies on inter-regional migration in this continent, we will concentrate on some topics that appear to characterise the European context. Starting from some stylized facts regarding mobility posing particular attention to the European Union agenda and its enlargement to the New Member States in Eastern and Central Europe, we will then discuss the extent to which the change in commuting patterns can represent an alternative form of spatial labour market adjustment given the high density of urbanization characterizing Europe. Finally, we focus on forced migration, that has afflicted (and still afflicts) the area in the last few years and is still among the main concerns facing the European Union because of its many related issues.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Social housing is a much larger fraction of the stock in most European countries and place-specific and rent controlled housing ties people to their existing locations (Cheshire and Magrini 2006).

  2. 2.

    NUTS1 are the major socio-economic regions, according to the Eurostat classification of territorial units for statistics.

  3. 3.

    An interesting first step towards understanding respective contemporaneous migration patterns is the paper by Sardadvar and Rocha-Akis (2016) who study the determinants of interregional net-migration flows in the enlarged European Union.

  4. 4.

    Here follows the description of the acronyms of the groups of State Members of the European Union:

    • EU-12 (1 November 1993–31 December 1994): Belgium (BE), Denmark (DK), France (FR), Germany (DE), Greece (EL), Ireland (IE), Italy (IT), Luxembourg (LU), Netherlands (NL), Portugal (PT), Spain (ES) and United Kingdom (UK)

    • EU-15 (1 January 1995–30 April 2004): EU-12 + Austria (AT), Finland (FI) and Sweden (SE)

    • EU-25 (1 May 2004–31 December 2006): EU-15 + Cyprus (CY), Czech Republic (CZ), Estonia (EE), Hungary (HU), Latvia (LV), Lithuania (LT), Malta (MT), Poland (PL), Slovakia (SK) and Slovenia (SI)

    • EU-27 (1 January 2007–30 June 2013): EU-25 + Bulgaria (BG) and Romania (RO)

    • EU-28 (from 1 July 2013): EU-27 + Croatia (HR).

  5. 5.

    EU-8: Czech Republic (CZ), Estonia (EE), Hungary (HU), Latvia (LV), Lithuania (LT), Poland (PL), Slovakia (SK), Slovenia (SI).

  6. 6.

    EU-2: Romania (RO) and Bulgaria (BG).

  7. 7.

    These flows, that are not homogeneously distributed across Europe, insist on a context where there are profound cultural differences and the system is not ready to accommodate them so their weight is more relevant than what the figure itself would suggest.

  8. 8.

    To our knowledge, there is no research evidence on the impact of these flows (EU-8 and EU-2 to EU-15) on the existing intra EU-15 flows.

  9. 9.

    To better understand the meaning of such percentages, consider that Switzerland, Luxembourg, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Belgium represent about 25% of the E-27 (plus Switzerland) population, whereas France, Germany and Belgium represent about 31%.

  10. 10.

    To be precise, according to the IASFM definition, forced migration also includes “people displaced by natural or environmental disasters, chemical or nuclear disasters, famine, or development projects”.

  11. 11.

    The original framework proposed by Borjas (2003) focusses only on wage adjustment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy

    Margherita Gerolimetto & Stefano Magrini

Authors
  1. Margherita Gerolimetto
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  2. Stefano Magrini
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Correspondence to Margherita Gerolimetto .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics and Business, University of Sassari-CRENoS-GSSI, L’Aquila, Italy

    Bianca Biagi

  2. Social Sciences, Gran Sasso Science Institute, L’Aquila, Italy

    Alessandra Faggian

  3. Department of Economics, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, Washington, USA

    Isha Rajbhandari

  4. Faculty of Spatial Sciences, Department of Economic Geography, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Viktor A. Venhorst

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Gerolimetto, M., Magrini, S. (2018). State of the Art and Future Challenges of Interregional Migration Empirical Research in Europe. In: Biagi, B., Faggian, A., Rajbhandari, I., Venhorst, V. (eds) New Frontiers in Interregional Migration Research. Advances in Spatial Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75886-2_5

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