Measuring Global Migration

This book focuses on how to improve the collection, analysis and responsible use of data on global migration and international mobility. While migration remains a topic of great policy interest for governments around the world, there is a serious lack of reliable, timely, disaggregated and comparable data on it, and often insufficient safeguards to protect migrants’ information. Meanwhile, vast amounts of data about the movement of people are being generated in real time due to new technologies, but these have not yet been fully captured and utilized by migration policymakers, who often do not have enough data to inform their policies and programmes. The lack of migration data has been internationally recognized; the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration urges all countries to improve data on migration to ensure that policies and programmes are “evidence-based”, but does not spell out how this could be done.

This book examines both the technical issues associated with improving data on migration and the wider political challenges of how countries manage the collection and use of migration data. The first part of the book discusses how much we really know about international migration based on existing data, and key concepts and approaches which are often used to measure migration. The second part of the book examines what measures could be taken to improve migration data, highlighting examples of good practice from around the world in recent years, across a range of different policy areas, such as health, climate change and sustainable development more broadly.

Written by leading experts on international migration data, this book is the perfect guide for students, policymakers and practitioners looking to understand more about the existing evidence base on migration and what can be done to improve it.

Frank Laczko is former Director of the IOM Global Migration Data Analysis Centre in Berlin. Prior to this, he was Head of Research at IOM HQ in Geneva. He was the Co-Chair of the UN Expert Group on International Migration Statistics (2018–2022). He has acted as an adviser to several international agencies including WHO, UNHCR, ILO and OECD. His current research focuses on migration from and to China. He has published extensively on a wide range of migration topics and is also an expert on social policy issues relating to poverty, labour markets and ageing. He is the co-author of Changing Work and Retirement (1991).

Elisa Mosler Vidal has worked in migration policy and research for eight years, most recently for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) at its Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC) in Berlin. There she led work focusing on migration data for development and data for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). She has authored numerous research reports and technical guidance documents on migration and co-authored IOM’s Migration Data Strategy (2020–2025). She is currently working towards a DPhil in Migration Studies at the University of Oxford, exploring the links between migration, development and health.

Marzia Rango has over ten years of experience working in migration data, research and public policy. She is currently a Migration and Human Mobility Specialist at the UN Operations and Crisis Centre (UNOCC) in the UN Secretariat in New York. Previously, she led work on responsible data innovation and data capacity building for governments at the Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC) of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Berlin. She was the co-convenor of the Big Data for Migration Alliance (BD4M) and is co-editor of Harnessing Data Innovation for Migration Policy (IOM, 2023) and Migration in West and North Africa and across the Mediterranean (IOM, 2020).