James Raymer, Division of Social Statistics
School of Social Sciences, Southampton, United Kingdom
Obtaining an overall picture of population movement in the European Union (assigned to theme
Because of differences in data availability, quality, and measurement, no consistent set of migration flow estimates exist between countries in Europe. In fact, only a limited set of information for a small number of countries are known. Given this situation, how does one obtain an overall picture of the population movements, and the related population change, occurring in Europe? This research begins to address this problem by discussing some key issues and by presenting a modeling strategy, which is then used to obtain estimates of the aggregate international migration flows in the European Union (plus Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland) during the 2001-2002 time period. The modeling process starts with the assumption that net migration levels are known, and then works systematically from situations involving the smoothing of relatively good, detailed, and consistent flow data to situations where the data are inadequate or missing. The available data, obtained from published reports by European Commission, are used as the basis for obtaining the estimates.
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(copyright Gunther Maier) |