European migration modelling database launched

CPC is pleased to announce the launch of a new database created to provide tables of migration flows among countries in the European Union and European Free Trade Association, as well as to and from the rest of the world.

The Integrated Modelling of European Migration (IMEM) database can present estimated migration flows by country of origin, country of destination, age and sex, and also includes measures of uncertainty.

Running from November 2009 until April 2012, the IMEM project, funded by New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Cooperation in Europe (NORFACE Migration), brought together academics and researchers with expertise in migration modelling (Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute and the ESRC Centre for Population Change), expert knowledge (University of Oslo) and data on migration (Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute).

The aim was to provide a general framework for modelling migration flows amongst countries in the world in the context of inconsistent, inadequate and missing data. Focus was on international migration flows amongst 31 countries in the European Union and European Free Trade Association, for the 2002-2008 period. The model, developed by the IMEM team, combines the official and publicly available migration flow data that are reported to Eurostat, with the qualitative and subjective judgements of the experts on migration data collection. The estimated migration flows relate to the flows of long-term migrants as defined in the Recommendations on Statistics of International Migration (United Nations 1998).

"We are very excited to have launched the IMEM database site, and we look forward to allowing users easy access to the results of our work in an instant and useful way," says Mr Wisniowski. "Estimating migration flows is important for our understanding of how and why populations change and thus for government planning policies. In addition, we believe that our framework will help countries to achieve the requirement to provide harmonised migration flow statistics to Eurostat as part of a new regulation passed by the European Parliament."

To use the database or read more about the project, please visit the IMEM database website.

Posted 01/07/2013 11:06