Conceptualizing and measuring migration policy change.

Katharina Natter,Simona Vezzoli,Hein de Haas

doi:10.1186/s40878-015-0016-5

Abstract

This paper outlines the methodology of DEMIG POLICY, a new database tracking around 6,000 migration policy changes in 45 countries between 1945 and 2014. The article conceptualizes the notion of migration policy change and presents the coding system used to operationalize policy content, changes in policy restrictiveness, as well as the magnitude of policy changes. The paper also discusses the potential of DEMIG POLICY to improve our understanding of the nature, evolution, and effectiveness of migration policies. Besides significantly extending the geographical and historical coverage of existing migration policy databases, DEMIG POLICY also tracks emigration policies in order to overcome the common ‘receiving country bias’ in migration research. By offering key insights into the main features of the largest migration policy database completed to date, this paper hopes to provide useful guidelines to improve future efforts to measure migration policies. Such improvement is crucial given the heated debates on migration policy effectiveness on one hand and the still limited empirical evidence on this issue on the other.

Highlights

Over the past decade, there have been increasing efforts to compile migration policy databases and to measure the impact of migration policies
This paper aims to highlight vital methodological issues with regards to the construction of migration policy databases though sharing our experiences and insights gained in compiling DEMIG POLICY
This paper offers insights into the main features of the largest migration policy database completed to date, and hopes to provide useful guidelines for future efforts to improve the measurement and coding of migration policies

Summary

Introduction

There have been increasing efforts to compile migration policy databases and to measure the impact of migration policies (for an overview of recent projects, see Ellerman 2013). The interest in measuring migration policies has gained momentum, there is still a lack of fundamental methodological discussions about the inherent trade-off between the desire to achieve a large historical (longitudinal) and geographical (cross-sectional) coverage on the one hand, and the comprehensiveness of policies that can be examined on the other Such trade-offs are common to most migration database endeavours, whether they track migration stocks, flows or policies. Most migration scholars have focussed on tracking changes in migration policies In their pioneering work, Mayda and Patel (2004) collected migration policies for 14 OECD countries between 1980 and 2000, covering policies in the areas of labour migration, asylum, family reunification, and border control. Hatton (2009) investigated asylum policy changes that occurred between 1981 and 1999 across the EU-15 area (except Luxembourg)

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