Collecting Data on International Migration: A Challenge in Developing Countries

Anne Herm, Tallinn University
Michel Poulain, Tallinn University and Université Catholique de Louvain

International migration is the weakest area in demography in term of data in both developping as well in more developped countries. At the same time it is among the hottest topic for policymakers and has hight priority in policy development of many countries. During decades there have been a lot of effort devoted to improve the situation. Among those there are the UN work on recommendations on statistics in the field of international migration. Based on our large field experience we intend to discuss how to improve the data collection on international migration in developping countries and how to ensure the optimal use for developping relevant policies of all available data on migration, both from statistical sources and administrative datasets. In order to provide effective support to policy, migration data should meet the conditions that could be put into five key words : availability, reliability, comparability, timeliness and policy relevance.