The United Nations Expert Group Meeting on Measuring International Migration: Concepts and Methods

1. Joint UNECE/Eurostat Work Session on Migration Statistics organized in collaboration with UNFPA Edinburgh, Scotland, 20-22 November 2006 The United Nations Expert Group Meeting on Measuring International Migration: Concepts and Methods Erlinda Go United Nations Statistics Division

2. The United Nations Expert Group Meeting on Measuring International Migration: Concepts and Methods Date: 4-7 December 2006 Venue: United Nations, New York

3. Why this meeting? • A lot of interest in measuring international migration but no common understanding of what constitutes international migration • What categories of migrants are of interest? • What exactly do we want to measure? • How well are we measuring it?

4. United Nations Recommendations for International Migration, revision 1 (1998) • Aim: to outline a process to improve both the quality and comparability of international migration statistics • Includes general concept and definitions relating to international migration • Introduces a framework for compiling and reporting international migration flow that reflects the complexity of current migration flows

5. However, • Still grappling with issues of quality, availability and comparability of migration data • Many challenges remain in measuring both international migration flow and migrant stock • International recommendations are not widely adopted: many countries have problems implementing them, from both conceptual and operational points of view

6. At this time, seek to understand: • Country policies and concerns regarding international migration • How policies translate to data requirements • Appropriate concepts and definitions that apply • “migrant”, “immigrant”, “immigration” have legal connotations and mean different things in different countries • “residence”, “usual residence”, “permanent residence”: legal constructs?? • Methods, data sources, coverage of the sources, what exactly each measures

7. The expert group meeting will therefore: • Identify the need for and uses of statistics on international migration in various countries and regions • Review the applicability of the UN concepts and definitions in various contexts; deliberate on the need for additional concepts and definitions • Review country practices and challenges in measuring migration from various types of sources

8. The expert group meeting will also: • Examine the criteria, definitions and policy considerations that countries use as bases for measuring “international migrant stock”. • Special efforts to measure emigration • Review existing data sharing arrangements; identify issues for consideration in developing data sharing protocols

9. Expected outcome of the meeting • A set of strategies and activities to improve the availability and comparability of migration statistics, for implementation at national, regional and international levels • The scope of a handbook on statistics of international migration that will • Provide detailed guidelines on compilation of statistics on both flow and stock • Supplement the current recommendations

10. For more information: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/meetings/egm/migrationegm06 • Contact: Erlinda Go (go@un.org and migstat@un.org)