MEETING MINUTES - Workshop, March 11, 2025, NTA15 Conference, Bangkok

Background documents:

OVERVIEW

The purpose of this workshop is to establish a working group on how NTA research can speak to issues around migration and immigration. Many of us have worked on related issues and this is a great opportunity to share methods and experiences and develop further innovative research ideas in this crucial area, where so many member countries are experiencing rapid change and looking for evidence-based policy analysis and recommendations.

We will start with short presentations from a group of NTA researchers who have worked on migration and immigration using NTA tools and then have a moderated discussion to include other related work going on in the network, promising future directions to enhance policy relevance and international comparability of results, and what a common framework and collaboration strategy might be to make progress in this area.

ORGANIZATIONAL PRINCIPLES

Timing of migration
- Permanent
- Shorter term
- Periodic
- Temporary (stepping stone)

Legal status
- Legal, illegal, other?
- Able to receive benefits?
- Covered by social protection programs?

Countries
- Receiving
- Sending
- Other?

PREVIOUS WORKS BY NTA TEAMS

Stefan and Tomas Domonkos, Slovak Republic

Slovak context
Survey data, EU labor force survey data
- Notoriously bad at capturing all migrants
- Surveys are available and harmonized
- Slovak Social Security data more comprehensive,
In small E European countries there is a LOT of cross border workers
For small countries, COMMUTERS may be as important as MIGRANTS
Issues
- Outmigration, brain drain in the long run?
- Return migration proportion?
- Are migrants taking more than they are contributing from social safety net?
- Not much "they are taking our jobs" issue because unemployment is really low right now.
- Slovak Republic being used as a STEPPING STONE by third country nationals to move further into Western Europe, but OUT MIGRATION is a much bigger issue than in migration
- Can we frame conclusions as policy recommendations in the context of stepping stone countries?
QUESTIONS
- How does NTA relate to the issue?
- Microdata issues around migration?
- Behavioral issues, how to handle ceteris paribus assumption?
- Remittances?
- Do all of the possible costs and benefits get discussed? Long term or short term? (example of the US discussing impacts in too short term perspective)
Did GA for Slovakia
- How to include foreigners? Because they weren't in hh surveys.
- Compared age structure of foreigners to natives and created a guess
- Inter and Intrahh transfers of migration
- Remittances!!

Robert Gal, Hungary

Fiscal impacts in the context of free movement of labor in European Union
Research $ for this is from rich countries, who are receiving countries, so…
- No discussion of what sending countries might be "owed" for educating those migrants
- Political scientist in public policy journal in Europe, poor member states want this issue on the agenda, but never get traction.
- The argument that Hungarians are fleecing German taxpayers is wrong, it's the other way around
What NTA can add is the benefit of the migration of WORKING AGE people. Germans didn't have to educate them, and they get their tax payers: FISCAL IMPACTS

Ivan Mejia, Mexico and US

Mexico as a "sending country" but extend the methods to also include the dynamics of return migration
- But would need data on whether people are return migrants
- That paper was from perspective of migrants, but what about their children?
Impact on demographic dividend?
- If you are using 10% of your workforce, what happens to support ratio, fiscal support ratios

Haodong Qi, Sweden

Migration researcher right now, doing migration forecasting
He has similar data to US, able to classify persons by country of birth, 1st and 2nd generation
- REGISTRY DATA IS VERY THOROUGH you can get info for ever person!
Current work
- Migration forecasting models in connection with climate change
- Climate change should have impact on generational economy

OPEN DISCUSSION

ILO regional program to improve data on labor migration (In Viet Nam) there is the potential
Relationship between labor migration and low or decreasing fertility? (There is a field of demography studying migrant fertility)
- Research showing overestimate of fertility because of timing issues
Singapore
- Research on general equilibrium effects on wages and prices in large countries shows not much impact from immigration, but what about small country??
IDEA: CALCULATE THE BENEFIT THAT RECEIVING COUNTRIES GET FOR NOT HAVING TO EDUCATE MIGRANTS
NEED TO HAVE SURVEYS INCLUDE OWN AND PARENTS BIRTHPLACE SO YOU CAN GET IMMIGRANT GENERATIONS
Nigeria
- Population issues with who moved, how to tracking people?
- Can Africa move to some sort of register to have better data?
- Urban/rural migration?
- Alternative data? Non-traditional? Mobile phone data is an example
- Census questions include migration?
Nepal
- Don't know if national team is going to asses "political deficit"
- Nepal is sending country of higher education young people going to Canada, Australia, US
- Politicians are happy to have young people leave and send their money but not their votes
Pakistan
- Pakistan relies a lot on remittances
- Getting out of poverty is often a matter of receiving remittances
- How does consumption pattern change based on remittances?
- Pakistani data doesn't tell who sent the income? We can guess but not good data
- Data issues bw immigration bureau vs ILO data
- Want to understand intracountry migration!
- If we calculate 2 NTAs over time from regions we know has a lot of migration vs not., could that help?
BIG PAYOFF FROM SIMPLIFYING ASSUMPTIONS!! WHAT CAN WE MAKE? What can we defend?
Inventory of data
Inventory of assumptions
Remittance fees?
Profile of costs and income profile for migration, how much does it cost to migrate?
- Incorporate questions on how much it costs to migrate into surveys?
Regimes of migrants that allow them to opt-out of destination country social protection system? Would then the country of origin would want to opt-in to home country's social protection programs?
Database on policy related to migration
- MISSOC is a social security database which may include rules on migration, when people qualify, how much, when
- US Social Security Administration may have a database of pension policies

How to move forward?

Zoom calls
Publication list
COMPARATIVE PAPER AS A MOTIVATING GOAL

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