European migration : A study of the migration flows in the European Union

by Söderlind, Albert; Larsson, Jenny

The purpose with this thesis is to analyse what factors influence the migration flows between the new (EU10) and old (EU15) EU-members. The thesis also examines how the factors that are significant affect the migration in- and outflow positive or negative. A comparison has been made for the years 1999 and 2004 in order to analyze how the situation for the new member states has changed as a consequence of the EUmembership. The models that have been used are: the Human Capital Model and the Todaro migration model. Human Capital Model is based on the idea that an individual can consider to migrate if the expected difference in income surpasses the monetary and the nonmonetary cost of movement as well. The Todaro model concerns the migration flows between rural areas and urban areas. Some of the variables used in the regressions are chosen from these models and are expected to influence a person’s choice of migration from their home country to another. To separate the old and the new EU-members, a dummy variable is used; 1 stands for EU10 and 0 stands for EU15. The results show that the EU10 members in year 1999 had lower in- and outflow than the EU15countries. Higher education has a negative relation with inflows and also a negative relation with outflows. The factors according to the regressions that were not significant for the migration flow, in- and outflows are unemployment and economic growth. A correlation matrix has been made to discover relationships between the independent variables. The conclusion of the thesis is that there are more than the economic factors that influence a person’s decision to migrate or not. Examples of other factors can be family related reasons, cultural differences and language barriers. ii