- The first motivation for the EMD is that despite many advances in the measurement of key concepts, government and partner stakeholders continue to face numerous challenges to the production and dissemination of migration data and statistics (see Part I, Chapter 1). For example, only 45 of the 193 UN Member States report statistics on migration flows and only 50 per cent of countries ask for the year or period of arrival in country in their population censuses, making it impossible to differentiate between international migrants and temporary migrants, or ‘movers’ (IOM and McKinsey, 2018). Political will and political sensitivity are important factors, as government stakeholders may not see the value in migration data or may be motivated to over- or under-report numbers of migrants. Oftentimes data are available but remain scattered across various (non)governmental entities or cannot be disaggregated by key socio-demographic markers, preventing an understanding of the situation of specific migrant groups. Furthermore, a lack of standardization in concepts and measures means that the data collected by different (non)governmental entities are not comparable.
- The second motivation is that existing manuals, toolkits and guidelines tend to focus more on “what” should be collected than on “how” it should be collected. For example, there are many recommendations on the definitions and measurement of different concepts and on the strengths and limitations of different data sources. However, there is less guidance on a) building a strong data regulatory environment that facilitates the production of migration data and statistics (see Part I, Chapter 3); b) the different mediums through which migration data and research can be disseminated to different audiences (see Part I, Chapter 3; c) strategies for encouraging data sharing and coordination between government entities (see Part II, Chapter 4); and d) the ways in which migration data can be analysed and visualized (see Part II, Chapter 5). Therefore, a key contribution of the EMD is to cover each step of the data life cycle, including data planning, collection, management, analysis and dissemination.
- The third motivation is that the scope of existing manuals, toolkits and guidelines tends to be limited to specific migration sub-types (e.g., EGRISS, 2018; 2020, ILO, 2018), specific data sources (e.g., IOM, 2023; UN DESA, 2022) or specific geographic regions (e.g., ILO, 2022; IOM, 2008). The EMD provides a more comprehensive overview of migration data and statistics, by compiling information from a wide range of materials. Whereas most materials tend to focus on international migration, the EMD also covers migration sub-types that have received less attention but are becoming increasingly relevant, such as temporary migrants or ‘movers’ (UNSD, 2021), circular and return migrants (UNECE, 2016) and internal migrants (Bell and Charles-Edward, 2014). Part II, Chapter 3 of the EMD also covers migration sub-types that focus more on the reasons for or the nature of migration, such as labour migration, forced displacement, irregular migration and environmental migration. Finally, each chapter of the EMD is populated with case studies providing an illustration of how the recommendations have been applied in different contexts.
Figure 1:
