Improving the Production and Use of Migration Statistics in the ENP-South Countries: MEDSTAT IV organises an Experts’ Meeting in the ILO premises, in Geneva, on 11-12 July 2018
Migration is an increasing phenomenon with fast changing modalities, evolving monitoring needs and a complex designing of policy measures. All this makes its measurement and the harmonisation of national data complicated. Among other, new international guidelines relevant for the migration statistics are underway, such as for instance the ones on labour migration and refugees and internally displaced people.
In the last decade different MEDSTAT projects assisted the improvement of migration statistics under the Euro-Mediterranean cooperation, significantly supporting the development of model tools, the conception, preparation and implementation of national surveys and the coordination of the international partner organisations under the Mediterranean Household International Migration Surveys (MED-HIMS Programme). MEDSTAT also supported the improvement of migration statistics on the basis of administrative registers and the integration of data sources. However, this was done in lower extend mainly due to constraints in the inter-institutional coordination within most of the involved countries.
In this context, MEDSTAT IV organized a new regional event on migration statistics, in the form of an experts’ meeting, for mainly discussing the use of residence permit data. The discussion built around the outcomes of a pilot tabulation recently launched under the project and also around the requirements and practices emerging within the region and at global level on activities such as the monitoring of the SDGs and the dissemination of data. The event benefited from the contributions of Eurostat, the ILO Department of Statistics, the UNECE Statistical Division and the Expertise France MEDSTAT IV Consortium, the latter including ISTAT-Italy.
The meeting saw a decisive progress in the participation of the relevant ministerial services of the ENP-South countries in the events of the MEDSTAT IV Migration sector component. The pilot tabulation based on residence permit data resulted so far in a better state than similar operations carried out in the past, but it still requires more efforts. In particular, the documentation of administrative procedures at the origin of that data registration should be integrated, leading to the improvement of comparability of national data.
The meeting endorsed the steps towards the launching of the Morocco-HIMS that will take place in the following weeks and the attempts for increasing the monitoring of migration under the SDG framework by mainstreaming migration in relevant statistical operations as well as trying innovative practices based on the Big Data.
Contacts:
Eurostat: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/fr/home
ILO: www.ilo.org/stat/lang–en/index.htm
UNECE: https://www.unece.org/
For more information, please contact MEDSTAT4@expertisefrance.fr
