John Stillwell, School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom
Census-based migration in the UK - that’s WICID! (assigned to theme
The Census Interaction Data Service (CIDS) in the UK has been developed to provide access for those in the academic community in the UK to the detailed migration statistics that are collected by the Census agencies and known collectively as the Special Migration Statistics (SMS). The various data sets that constitute the SMS are the flows of migrants between origin and destination zones at census ward and local authority level in 1991 and 2001, together with counts of migrants between output areas in 2001. These data sets are very large and complex and, partly because of problems relating to user access, have not been used extensively. This paper outlines how the access problems have been tackled with the development of a web-based interface system known as WICID that can be used to extract data from any of the various data sets that contain either the raw SMS flows or flows derived by estimation from the census counts. Examples of the latter include flows adjusted to account for suppression or modelled flows that enable comparison between a consistent set of zones from one census to another. The paper will summarize the characteristics and shortcomings of the data holdings in the system before illustrating what the data reveal about migration in the UK in 2001 and what changes have occurred between 1991 and 2001. The analytical functionality of WICID will also be exemplified.
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