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*All practices are to uphold the ten guiding principles of the GCM. This practice particularly exemplifies these listed principles.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Dates

2020 - 2023

Type of practice

Measuring/Data collection

Geographic scope

Regions:

Europe

Summary

The QuantMig Migration Scenarios Explorer gives access to the migration scenarios assumptions and results for 15 simulated scenarios of future population change in for 31 European countries from 2020 to 2060, as well as derived analytical indicators. The scenarios concern population in 31 European countries by age, sex, place of birth, educational attainment and labour force participation by migration scenarios of high migration events published in: M Potančoková (2023), Discussion paper & policy brief: scenario results. QuantMig Project Deliverable D10.1.

A microsimulation model was used to simultaneously project the population of all 31 countries by 13 socio-demographic characteristics. The QuantMig Migration Scenarios Explorer features 15 scenarios: the Baseline scenario and 14 scenarios of high migration events from different world regions (corresponding to twice-in-a-century frequency of occurrence). You can learn more about the model, its modules, parameters and underlying data in: G Marois, M Potančoková and M González-Leonardo (2023) QuantMig-Mic microsimulation population projection model. QuantMig Project Deliverable D8.2.

In the Scenarios Explorer tool, the "Immigration flows" tab is useful for visualising immigration from different world regions into the EU+ countries projected in the Baseline scenarios, as well as for various high migration events. The "Pyramids", "Indicators" and "Maps" tabs visualise the results of the projected scenarios. The Explorer is accompanied by a comprehensive User Guide.

Of course, the scenarios are inherently uncertain and present only a few of the many possible futures, for a small selection of migration flows concerning Europe. The scenarios are intended as planning tools, to illustrate the consequences of different migration assumptions. These assumptions can either describe the continuation of past migration trends, or various high migration events, which approximate some of the underlying uncertainty.

Organizations

Main Implementing Organization(s)

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis

Partner/Donor Organizations

University of Southampton

University of Continued Education Krems

Max Planck Society – Population Europe

Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute

Peace Research Institute

University of Oslo

Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique

Benefit and Impact

The QuantMig Migration Scenarios Explorer offers a multi-perspective analysis of state-of-the-art scenarios of various future migration trends concerning Europe together with their demographic and labour market impacts. Thanks to the use of a very flexible microsimulation model to generate the scenarios, the results can be presented and analysed in various breakdowns that may be of analytical interest, such as age, sex, region of birth, education level or economic activity status. The scenarios are based on innovative statistical methodology, based on an analysis of relative frequencies of rare migration events. As such, this resource is intended to provide foundations for further research and policy analysis, which will be of substantive interest in many migration-related areas, wherever longer-term perspective is needed for strategic planning. Examples of such areas of application include preparing for demographic change, labour market and social security reforms, investments in education, and many more.

Key Lessons

Existing migration scenarios rarely quantify qualitative assumptions formally, especially with respect to the links between the underlying narratives, related migration drivers, and migration as such. This task is very difficult, if at all possible, given the complexity of migration driver environments. Alternatively, by using vignettes, expert opinion on various scenarios could be systematically explored through careful experimental design. While the results can help to narrow down the scope of possible future scenarios, they are still bound to miss unexpected events.

An alternative approach for designing scenarios, at a higher level and thus less resource intensive, involves moving away from drivers and focusing on the magnitude of unforeseen events by looking at features of probability distributions of past series of migration estimates.

Baseline scenario results confirm that international migration plays a key role in population change in Europe. Migration exchange with the rest of the world’s regions will gain even more prominence against the backdrop of declining intra-European migration due to population ageing, smaller young cohorts, and reducing intensity of emigration from newer member states.

Alternative scenarios show that even high-migration events do not leave a lasting imprint on the European working-age population size and projected total labour force unless high immigration persists. High-migration events followed by persistent flows only slightly alter the projected working-age population and labour force trajectories. That can happen only if the high-migration event is triggered from a region with existing migration ties to the destination country.

Confirming earlier findings, to slow down population ageing and stabilise labour force dependency ratios in Europe, significantly higher and sustained immigration would be needed than can be reasonably envisaged. Labour force decline, however, is not inevitable and can be less substantial than the projected working-age population decline.

(After: White Paper on Migration Uncertainty, https://bit.ly/migration-uncertainty)

Recommendations(if the practice is to be replicated)

Despite progress in harmonisation and modelling of migration, more detailed information concerning different native-born and foreign-born populations, and their return migration, is lacking. In addition, macro-level comparative studies are often limited by poor data availability. This impedes more nuanced modelling of European population diversity, and points to priority areas for future data collection and harmonisation.

In setting scenarios, as in forecasting, there is a need to distinguish between different types of flows that are characterised by different uncertainty levels, and to provide a systematic way of quantifying the underlying narratives.

A practical option for scenario setting is to use selected quantiles from the upper tails of the probability distributions of estimates, which can help to approximate the possible magnitude of migration events of various frequencies, for example, once-in-a-decade or twice-in-a-century.

In our scenarios, high-migration events would have to be of a very large magnitude to leave an imprint on labour supply and long-term demographic trends. As a result, the power of migration to change the fundamentals of labour force dynamics is limited. This needs to be recognised in the policy arena.

Inclusive policies are paramount, given that the share of the non-EU+ foreign-born population is expected to double and in some main destination countries to reach 30–40% of the total population by 2060 according to the baseline scenario.

(After: White Paper on Migration Uncertainty, https://bit.ly/migration-uncertainty)

Innovation

The underpinning methodology, combining microsimulation-based population, labour force and human capital projections with statistical theory concerning the frequency of rare events is novel and unique: the rare-events approach to scenario setting has been developed specifically within the QuantMig project (www.quantmig.eu) to inform the presented scenarios. The methodology is transferrable to other contexts – and the microsimulation-based elements are indeed implemented in the Wittgenstein Centre Human Capital Explorer (2018) for the whole world – subject to the availability of harmonized data for migration. The scenarios already factor in the events of early 2020s, such as the impacts of the COVID pandemic and full-scale war in Ukraine.

Additional Resources

QuantMig Migration Scenarios Explorer

Additional Images

Date submitted:

15 July 2024

Disclaimer: The content of this practice reflects the views of the implementers and does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations, the United Nations Network on Migration, and its members.