Monitoring international migration flows in Europe. Towards a statistical data base combining data from different sources.

"The paper reviews techniques developed in demography, geography and statistics that are useful for bridging the gap between available data on international migration flows and the information required for policy making and research. The basic idea of the paper is as follows: to establish a coherent and consistent data base that contains sufficiently detailed, up-to-date and accurate information, data from several sources should be combined.... The issues may be tackled more easily if the statistics that are being compiled are viewed as different outcomes or manifestations of underlying stochastic processes governing migration. The link between the processes and their outcomes is described by models, the parameters of which must be estimated from the available data.... The paper discusses the experience of the U.S. Bureau of the Census in combining migration data from several sources. It also summarizes the many efforts in Europe to establish a coherent and consistent data base on international migration." (SUMMARY IN FRE) excerpt