Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA.
Demography. 2012 Nov;49(4):1307-33. doi: 10.1007/s13524-012-0117-9.
Empirical tests of migration systems theory require consistent and complete data on international migration flows. Publicly available data, however, represent an inconsistent and incomplete set of measurements obtained from a variety of national data collection systems. We overcome these obstacles by standardizing the available migration reports of sending and receiving countries in the European Union and Norway each year from 2003-2007 and by estimating the remaining missing flows. The resulting harmonized estimates are then used to test migration systems theory. First, locating thresholds in the size of flows over time, we identify three migration systems within the European Union and Norway. Second, examining the key determinants of flows with respect to the predictions of migration systems theory, our results highlight the importance of shared experiences of nation-state formation, geography, and accession status in the European Union. Our findings lend support to migration systems theory and demonstrate that knowledge of migration systems may improve the accuracy of migration forecasts toward managing the impacts of migration as a source of social change in Europe.
实证检验迁移系统理论需要关于国际迁移流的一致和完整的数据。然而，公开可用的数据代表了从各种国家数据收集系统获得的不一致和不完整的测量集合。我们通过每年标准化欧盟和挪威的发送国和接收国的可用迁移报告，并估计剩余的缺失流来克服这些障碍。然后，使用由此产生的协调估计来测试迁移系统理论。首先，通过定位随时间变化的流的大小的阈值，我们在欧盟和挪威内部确定了三个迁移系统。其次，通过检查关于迁移系统理论预测的流的关键决定因素，我们的结果突出了民族国家形成、地理和加入欧盟地位的共同经验的重要性。我们的研究结果支持迁移系统理论，并表明对迁移系统的了解可能会提高迁移预测的准确性，从而有助于管理欧洲作为社会变革来源的迁移的影响。
