Universität zu Köln – Institut für Soziologie und Sozial-psychologie

Seminar: Social Demography

Lecturer: Dr. Mengni Chen

Key factors affecting Immigration to European Union:

a cross-sectional analysis of data from the European Social Survey

Submitted by: Khanbala Ahmadli

Matriculation number: 7384881
Course of studies: M.S.c Sociology and Social Research
Date: 25.02.2021
Address, email: kahmadli@smail.uni-koeln.de
Table of content

1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 3
2. Literature Review ........................................................................................................ 4
3. Research Gaps ............................................................................................................. 6
4. Research Questions......................................................................................................... 7
5. Data and Methods............................................................................................................... 7
8. References ........................................................................................................................... 12

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 1. Introduction
Over the past 50 years, immigration has emanated a substantial strength and premier
phenomenon throughout the world. In accustomed host countries for international migrants
such as Canada, Australia, and the United States, the capacity of immigration has escalated and
its structure has strenuously transferred from Europe, the historically dominant source, toward
Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Concurrently, the migrant-sending countries instantaneously
adjusted to immigrant-receiving societies in Europe. Western European countries captivated
significant amounts of migrant workers from overseas after World War II finished.
Notwithstanding the migrants were primarily attracted especially from the southern European
countries, off the end 1960s they usually came from developing countries in Asia, Africa, the
Caribbean, and the Middle East (Massey, Douglas S., et al, 1993). The recent international
report of migration (2019) notes that there were around 272 million international migrants
globally, comprising 3.5% of the world population. It is important to bear in mind that this is a
tiny minority of the population in the world, thus staying within one’s country of birth
overpoweringly remains the norm. UNDP denotes that the vast number of the world’s
population does not have the intention to move across borders; most people migrate within the
EU countries (an estimated 740 million internal migrants in 2009). It convinced, the expansion
in international migrants has been apparent over the period – both numerical values and as a
percentage – and at a slightly enhance rate than beforehand anticipated (World Migration
Report, 2019).
The term “immigration” has come to be used to refer to from the perspective of the country of
arrival, the act of moving into a country other than one’s country of nationality or usual
residence, so that the country of destination effectively becomes his or her new country of usual
residence (United Nations, 1998). The United Nations Recommendations on Statistics of
International Migration defines “an international migrant as any person who has changed his
or her country of usual residence, distinguishing between “short-term migrants” (those who
have changed their countries of usual residence for at least three months, but less than one
year) and “long-term migrants” (those who have done so for at least one year”. Nevertheless,
some countries use different requirements to categorize international migrants by, for instance,
application of divergent minimal period of residence. Differences in concepts and definitions,
as well as data collection methodologies between countries, hinder full comparability of
national statistics on international migrants (World Migration Report, p.21, 2019). In 2018, 2.2
million people immigrated to the EU, while 0.9 million people emigrated from the EU. Total
net immigration to the EU is estimated at 1.3 million people. Without migration, the European
population would have shrunk by half a million, given that 4.2 million children were born, and
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4.7 million people died in the EU. In 2019, 3 million first residence permits were issued in the
EU for the following reasons (European Commission, 2019):

Source: Eurostat

2. Literature Review
Regardless of the growth of literature, it lacks comprehension and information on the reasons
for immigration to the host countries. The push and pull factors have become a critical issue of
immigration in the last decades. “Push” or supply-side factors indicate to affect the incentive
and enthusiasm to emigrate, conversely “pull” or demand-side factors mean to influence the
necessitate for immigrants in the destination country. The expected average income between
destination and source countries is taken into account as an essential factor affecting the
willingness to migrate. The relative expected income inequalities can be estimated by the
amount of per capita household income in the home countries (OECD, 2001).
The study was conducted to recognize the features of immigration inflows focusing, among
other determinants, on the role of GDP per capita in host countries by Mayda (2010) and by
Ortega and Peri (2013). Both studies demonstrate that higher levels of GDP per capita have a
positive effect on the decision-making of immigrants.
Adam A. Ambroziak et al. in 2016 was one of the firsts to scrutinize factors and features
affecting immigration to Poland as the EU member state. In his review of key factors affecting
immigration, Adam A. Ambroziak et al. questions the need for many economic factors to
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encourage or discourage immigration to a given region or country. Initial work on this field
focused primarily on two serious important factors - demographical and socio-economic have
a considerable impact on people’s decision to immigrate to the EU member states (Ambroziak
et al., 2016). A recent review of the literature on this subject found that demographic factors
include age, education level or education in years, marital status, and language impact one’s
willingness to migrate. The countless economic and non-economic determinants are found to
be influential in the migration decision. Migrants can be “pushed” out of their home countries
due to deteriorating economic conditions or political unrest. Conversely, migrants are often
“pulled” into destinations that offer high wages, substantial labor market opportunities,
favorable health care, and strong educational systems (Simpson, 2017). Some researchers
categorized a complex combination of macro-, meso- and micro- factors, the former acting at
the society level and the latter acting at the family or even individual level. Furthermore,
investigation into the principal factors driving immigration, Vishwanath, 1991 and Burda, 1995
show that the inequality of annual income is valid measure that does not seize the estimated
average costs and profits throughout a migrant’s lifetime which is taken into account of an
important conception.
In the last few years, much more information about the impact of life expectancy on
immigration has become available to comprehend why people are drawn into developed
countries in the EU. “Life expectancy has come to be used to refer to define as the average
number of years that people of a particular age could expect to live if they experienced the age
and sex-specific mortality rates prevalent in a given country in a particular year” (p. 120).
Since the determinants of longevity change slowly, life expectancy is best analyzed over a long-
time horizon. Cohort life expectancy takes account of the projected changes in mortality
estimates for a given cohort (OECD, 2017).
It is logical to believe that, a priori, there is a high life expectancy in countries with high
standards of food, hygiene, and general welfare conditions. Economic development and
changes in certain environmental conditions, improvements in lifestyle, and advances in health
and medicine have led to a continuous improvement in the life expectancy in Europe. This
situation places the 28 countries of the European Union among the world leaders in terms of
life expectancy (Grau Grau, A.J, 2017).
The remarkable increase in life expectancy is one of the greatest achievements of the last
century. Lives continue to get longer, and this trend is predicted to continue. In 2015-20, life
expectancy at birth averaged 78.3 years for men and 83.4 years for women. Among women, the
figure was highest in Japan (87.2 years) and lowest in Turkey (79.3 years). For men, life
expectancy at birth was highest in Iceland (81.6 years) and lowest in Latvia (69.7 years). On
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average across OECD countries, remaining life expectancy at age 65 is projected to increase by
4.2 years among women and 4.6 years among men during the next 45 years (OECD, 2017).
After the refurbishment of Europe, European countries run into economic growth. The
economic expansion of the OECD countries increased normally by 5 percent per year between
1950 and 1973. It developed an enormous demand for workers, so France, Germany, and the
United Kingdom encountered a shortage of workforce. Initially, they started to recruit people
who were displaced during World War II. In that period, most countries had their colonial ties,
so France turned into North Africa and the UK to the Caribbean and India. Germany was the
country did not have colonies, started to engage workers with the short-term contract from
Western Europe, especially Yugoslavia and Turkey. After this growing demand, net
immigration for Western Europe attained around 10 million immigrants (Stalker, 1994).
After certain years of economic growth, Europe has achieved a remarkable increase in labor
migration. Subsequently, some countries have intensively been engaging migrant workers from
various countries, even they recruited unskilled workers on a short-term or seasonal basis for
agriculture, construction, and manufacturing (IOM, 2000).
In 2019, the EU-27 employment rate for persons aged 20 to 64, as measured by the EU labor
force survey (EU LFS), stood at 73.1 %, the highest annual average ever recorded for the EU.
Behind this average, large differences between countries can nevertheless be found. Sweden
displays the highest employment rate in the EU so far: 82.1 %. Such a high rate is also observed
in the EFTA countries Iceland (85.9 %) and Switzerland (82.9 %). Although the EU-27, had
not yet reached its target in 2019, 17 EU Member States had reached or even exceeded the
Europe 2020 strategy target. These countries include three Nordic Member States (Sweden,
Denmark and Finland), the three Baltic Member States (Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia) as well
as the Netherlands, Germany, Czechia, Slovenia, Portugal, Cyprus, Hungary, Malta, Ireland,
Austria, and Bulgaria. The United Kingdom as well as Iceland, Switzerland and Norway had
also employment rates above 75 %. At the other end of the scale, the employment rate was far
from the EU target, i.e. below 70 %, in Croatia, Italy, Spain and Greece, with the latter country
recording the lowest rate among the EU Member States (61.2 %). The candidate countries
Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Turkey registered employment rates of 65 % or
below (Eurostat, 2019).
3. Research Gaps
The gaps and shortcomings have been clearly recognized when I look at the literature on
immigration. On the conceptual level, there are serious limitations with the commonly used (yet
often critiqued) push and pull framework as an explanatory tool for migration decision-making
processes, as argued by several scholars (cf. de Haas, 2008). Although results appear consistent
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with prior research, they appear inconsistent with employment and life expectancy. The main
weakness in the studies is that they make attempt to take into consideration mostly
demographical and socio-economic factors.
An assessment of the economic impact of immigration depends to a large degree on the
economic performance of immigrants themselves and how quickly they adapt to the new
environment. Different perspectives on these issues underlie much of the debate on the
appropriate level of immigration and the desired characteristics of the immigrant flow. How
quickly an immigrant succeeds in integrating into the labor market, for instance, impinges on
the debate concerning the size of the fiscal cost of immigration and the policies, such as
language training, that are specifically designed to facilitate the pace of migrant assimilation
(Borjas, 1998 and LaLonde and Topel, 1992).
4. Research Questions
The paper will examine what the key potential factors affecting to the immigration to EU. The
research question will help to contribute eliminating gaps in migration research as well as
attempting to find out additional factors influencing immigration to the EU. In an EU-wide
opinion survey in 2016, respondents stated that “immigrants [who] are committed to the way
of life” of countries of destination should be the most important factor in deciding whether
someone born, brought up and living abroad should be able to immigrate (OECD, 2020).
Although the conditions under which migration has positive or negative effects on development
remain a matter of dispute, there is broad agreement and evidence that migration can have a
positive impact on development; and insofar as migration policies help to determine migration
flows, it can be argued that these policies also affect development ( GEP 2006; WMR 2005).
5. Data and Methods
The paper analyzes data from the ESS 2018, which cover 29 European and associated countries,
respectively, and World Bank Development Indicators 2018. However, in this paper, it is only
used data for the EU-24 countries. The ESS interviews around 50,000 randomly selected
persons of age 15 or above in each country. ESS 2018 contains an appropriate measurement
with several questions about immigration. This database is exclusive in the sense that it includes
several questions regarding respondents’ attitude of the socio-economic implications of
international migration, too. The hypothesizes formulated to examine key factors affecting
immigration as follows: a) GDP per capita positively influences people’s decision to migrate to
the EU Member States; b) Life expectancy positively affect immigrant flows to the EU; c) The
employment opportunities of host countries have a positive impact on the immigration to the
EU.
Dependent variable
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This paper uses the cross-sectional analyze to find out results and validate the hypothesizes
which are critical to this study. As the ESS does not provide the number of immigrants in EU
member countries, it is recoded and generated a new variable called immigration by using
country of citizen variable - “Are you a citizen of country?”. Switzerland, Norway, Iceland,
Montenegro, and Serbia were excluded from the analyze, because target area is the EU member
states (until 2018).
Independent variables
Age was categorized into nine levels: 1) 29 years and younger; 2) 30–34 years; 3) 35–39 years;
4) 40–44 years; 5) 45–49 years; 6) 50–54 years; 7) 55–59 years; 8) 60– 64 years; and 9) 65
years or older. GDP per capita, life expectancy and employment were considered as
independent variables to measure the impact of economic factors on immigration to the EU.
The data for GDP per capita and life expectancy were extracted from World Bank World
Development Indicators (2018). In answer to the question “Have you ever been unemployed
and seeking work for a period of more than three months?”, respondents chose between: 1) Yes;
2) No. It was created a new variable named employment, based on this variable and coded 0
“Unemployed” 1 “Employed.

Table 2: Description of independent variables

6. Results
The cross-sectional analyze indicates that the most immigrants live in Estonia (n=230), while
the country with the lowest number of migrants is Slovakia (n=1) (Figure 1). The immigrants
who are willing to move into abroad had were less satisfied with their GDP per capita in the
source country: the expected mean for number of immigrants is 0.01068 at 0.00 USD GDP per
capita. A 1 US $ increase in the amount of GDP per capita is predicted to increase the mean
number of immigrants by 9.73 scale points. Testing for difference in these means yield t=4.67
(with p=0.000). The regression table indicates that GDP per capita (GDPpercap) behave
similarly, with high significance levels (5%). The coefficients indicate, nonetheless, that they
are crucial for international migration flow and positively affect in the numbers of immigrants
migrating Europe. The estimated average mean of immigration is – 0.460 at 0 years life
expectancy in host countries. The expected value on dependent variable will be less than 0 when
all independent/predictor variables are set to 0. A 1-year increase in the length of life expectancy
is predicted to increase the mean of immigration by 0.006 points scale. t= -14.50 indicates a
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reversal in the directionality of the effect, which has no bearing on the significance of the
difference between groups.

Number of immigrtans in EU member countries, 2018

Sweden
Netherlands
Countries

Italy
Croatia
Finland
Denmark
Cyprus
Austria
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000
Number of immigrants

Immigrant Local

Figure 1: Number of immigrants in EU member countries, 2018

Source: European Social Survey 2018
We validated that the number of immigrants is correlated with employment opportunities in the
destination countries. The estimated mean of immigration is 0.063 at 0 years of employment in
the host countries. With every additional year of employment, the estimated mean of
immigration decreases by 0.02 points scale compared to unemployed immigrants.

Table 2 Regression analysis of immigration and employment

With the purpose of validity of results, all the significant variables are test for interaction with
age and found significant interactions.
7. Conclusion
An increasing research interest have been made on the economic factors influencing
immigration in the last decades. This research paper summarized some of the key research
findings of key factors affecting immigration faced by countries in the European Union. The

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first hypothesis is “Higher GDP per capita in European Union member countries influences
migrants’ decision-making process to migrate” (see table 3). The hypothesis is supported by
the study and GDP per capita plays an important role on migrants’ decision to migrate. The
second is “Life expectancy positively affect the number of immigrants to EU”. The regression
table shows that life expectancy differences among the source and host countries may motivate
many people to migrate into the European Union. For instance, Belgium, Estonia, Germany,
and Ireland are the countries which attract the most immigrants outside European Union.
Simultaneously, life expectancy is also significant, whose positive results show that the country
with higher life expectancy attracts more immigration. The hypothesis is supported to
disproportionately for the EU member states. Undoubtedly, the intercept of life expectancy has
the highest values, thereby the number of immigrants grows in compliance with different
variations (Hypothesis 2). Life expectancy is thereupon vital for attracting and strengthening
the immigration flow. The last hypothesis is “The employment opportunities of host countries
have a positive impact on the immigration to the EU”. The regression table indicates that there
is correlation and positive impact on immigration to the EU member states. Over the last few
years, employment rates have been grown in Europe, which has been one of the reasons that
may vindicate the increase of immigration rates. The findings show that unemployment rates
urge a decrease in immigration to the EU member states. The results convince us that the
suggested hypothesis is entirely supported (Hypothesis 3).

Table 3 Final results

The examination of the key factors influencing immigration drives to different fascinating
research questions. In this paper, I have used Pull and Push factors theoretical framework to
analyze which features have serious impact on immigration. Indeed, several variables are

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considered to validate my hypothesizes in the Pull and Push factors theory (GDP per capita, life
expectancy, employment).
In conclusion, the cross-sectional analyze of data from European Social Survey 2018 found that
GDP per capita, life expectancy and employment are the most serious factors affecting
immigration to the EU member countries, despite of some limitations and difficulties of this
research paper.

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 8. References
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