Estimation of international migration flows in Europe

Principal researcher

Beata Nowok

Type of research

PhD research

Supervisors

Professor Frans Willekens

Collaboration

The Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI)

Funding

University of Groningen, Fellowship September 2006-September 2009

Public Defence

October 28, 2010. 13.15 Academic Building, Groningen.

Summary of the project

The European Union faces an urgent need for comprehensive and comparable statistics on international migration in order to support the development of a common EU migration policy. Yet required migration data are missing. They are, and will continue to be, produced at national level from a wide range of sources and according to various rules. When the data are not there, models can be used to fill in the gaps. The trust in statistical estimation methods is expressed also by the European Commission. The recently adopted Community legislation on migration statistics provides for use of estimation methods for adjusting data to meet the harmonized definition.

The aim of my PhD research is to develop a method to overcome one of the main sources of data incomparability, namely inconsistencies in definitions and measurements of international migration in terms of time dependence. The model will be built on the identified data typology that results from different ways that migration is conceptualized and measured. The impact of different data types on reported volume of migration will be illustrated based on statistics on flows between the EU countries.

Dissertation

• Full text of dissertation

Publications 

• Beata Nowok (2010), Harmonization by simulation. A contribution to comparable international migration statistics in Europe. PhD thesis.
• Kupiszewska, D. and B. Nowok (2008), Comparability of statistics on international migration flows in the European Union. In: J. Raymer & F.Willekens (eds.), International migration in Europe; data, models and estimates. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, p. 41-71
• Nowok, B (2008), Evolution of international migration statistics in selected Central European countries. In: J. Raymer & F.Willekens (eds.), International migration in Europe; data, models and estimates. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, p. 73-87.

Papers in progress

• Nowok, B. and F. Willekens , Towards harmonisation of migration statistics: a probabilistic perspective.

Presentations

• "A microsimulation tool for reconciling various measures of origin-destination-specific migration flows". Paper presented at the PAA, April 30-May 2 2009, Detroit, Session 'Improved methods for demographic data collection and analysis'.
• " Towards harmonisation of migration statistics: a probabilistic perspective". Paper presented at the EPC, Barcelona, 9-12 July 2008, Session 'Data Sources, Measurement and Models'.