Abstract
There is no single framework in place in the United Kingdom for collating and harmonizing the data on migration taking place between the subnational administrative units that constitute the home nations, together with the flows of international migration between these areas and the ‘rest of the world’. This paper proposes the construction of complete matrices of subnational migration statistics on an annual basis which can then be used to monitor migration trends throughout the UK in a comprehensive manner. The paper reviews how various ‘known’ flows are estimated by the national statistics agencies and develops estimates to fill in the gaps in the matrices. It then looks at changing patterns of migration in the UK between 2001/2002 and 2010/2011, showing that migration exhibits most activity in the middle of the decade. Flows within the home nations are the most consistent over time, while the patterns of international migration and migration across the borders of the home nations exhibit more substantial change. The latter flows, although relatively small in magnitude, have not previously been studied at the subnational level in any detail. Patterns of subnational internal and international net migration are found to be negatively correlated.
Highlights
Migration statistics are an integral component of population change alongside the natural change components of births and deaths
In the estimation presented in this paper, Iterative Proportional Fitting (IPF) is a suitable approach as consistent marginal totals are available for cross-border and within-Northern Ireland migration, and the speed in which the routine can be implemented in the software package R allows for efficient estimation across the decade
We have presented the methodology used in the construction of a set of consistent matrices of estimated origin–destination migration for (1) internal intranational, (2) internal cross-border, and (3) international migration flows in the United Kingdom (UK) for 2001/2002–2010/2011
Summary
Migration statistics are an integral component of population change alongside the natural change components of births and deaths. The NHSCR gives detail on migration across the borders of the UK at HA level (national for Northern Ireland), but data on cross-border flows between LADs in each of the constituent countries (labelled D to I in Fig. 1) do not currently exist and have not been estimated by any of the NSAs. This is a major gap in the subnational estimation process and is tackled in our estimations presented in ‘‘Estimating the missing sections of the matrix’’ section.
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