Global Dynamics

Chapter 6Estimating Inter-regional Migration in Europe

Adam Dennett and Alan Wilson

6.1 Introduction

In this chapter, we show how methods of biproportional fitting – assembled through the use of entropy-maximising methods – can be used to generate estimates of missing data, and particularly flows, from partially complete sets of data. This enables us to generate inter-regional migration flows within Europe.

Understanding migration is one of the enduring challenges facing geographers and demographers worldwide. The challenge persists, thanks to the range of territories and geographical scales of interest, the difficulty in dealing with inconsistent definitions of migrants and migration events, the variable (and often poor) quality of data and the large and sometimes complex array of tools available. While an understanding of migration patterns and processes at the global scale presents possibly the largest challenge, in Europe we still know far less about the movements of people within the Union than may be expected given the continued desire for knowledge about population change and the amount of demographic data made available from member countries (Poulain et al., 2006). Acknowledging this, a number of recent projects have made attempts to address some of the limitations of (intra-) European migration data. Against a background of varying migrant definitions, inconsistent data relating to the same flows collected for origins and destinations, and incomplete matrices, the ...