Although fragmented by disciplinary boundaries, most migration theories tend to agree on the importance of economic factors in driving the flows of international migration. Nevertheless, empirically, the significance of economic factors is not unequivocal, which makes future mobility patterns difficult to foresee with certainty. This report seeks to understand what undermines the consistency of empirical findings from a methodological perspective. Specifically, we reviewed common approaches for estimating the migration responses to economic disparities, and found that the estimates are very sensitive to different model assumptions and specifications. We further derived a Flow Specific Common Correlated Effects (FSCCE) model. The model estimates revealed pervasive heterogeneity; the economic motives vary substantially depending on migrants' countries of origin and their choices of destination in the European Union.
The purpose of this research note is to develop protocols and templates for data collection, which could be applied to social policy legislation in order to create new indicators on the social rights of migrants. In this research note, we review the current state-of-the-art of social policy data specifically addressing the situation of migrants. We identify a need for new quantitative indicators of what rights migrants can expect from social policy that are suitable for systematic cross-national research. We also outline an approach to collect such indicators, including a data template that fruitfully can be used as a starting point for future infrastructure projects on migrants' social rights. In order to test the feasibility of our new approach, we asked national experts to complete the data template for their countries. Thereafter we evaluated their experience of being part of this data collection project. The methodology of inviting external national experts to complete the data template on migrants' social rights proved possible, but highly challenging. It was difficult to cover a large number of countries, and data quality was an issue of concern. We also encountered problems in following up on data codings with the national experts after the initial task was completed. Our experience in this pilot project of immigrants' social rights suggests that future implementations at a minimum should be based on a budget sufficient to pay the national experts for their time – and to be able to commit them to quality control updates. A viable alternative might be to collect data in-house, and rely on experts on an ad-hoc basis, and when needed. Data on migrants' social rights is of great importance in analyses of social Europe, but data are not readily available in a way suitable for quantitative analyses. Despite the challenges inherent to this pilot project, the data we were able to generate reveal interesting cross-country differences. There are therefore strong reasons for continued efforts in setting up a ...
Is Belgium (and Flanders in particular) a 'social investment state'? Belgium is a solid welfare state, with moderate income inequality and generous social expenditure. Nevertheless, due to the 'conservative-corporatist' tradition, many services of general interest are actually provided either by local authorities, or by private (mainly not-for-profit) stakeholders, with government subsidies. This has probably led to a better match between the quality of services and the needs of consumers, but also to cream-skimming (e.g. in childcare), exclusion of households that are unable to pay (e.g. in financial services or water provision), shortages (e.g. in housing), and Matthew effects (mainly in housing, but actually in nearly all services). Government intervention has definitely ironed out the worst inequalities (e.g. in water provision or health care) but has never been very proactive in guaranteeing citizens' rights (e.g. through social minimum standards) by law. In the past decades, the redistributive capacity of social protection has come under serious strain since the 1980s: social security benefits have been lagging behind the general welfare trend, resulting in an increasing gap between working and non-working households. Furthermore, since the crisis of 2008, cutbacks have been imposed in nearly all sectors of public expenditure (including the five sectors examined in this report). As one of the most prosperous regions of Europe - and one of the least affected by the crisis, Flanders has been able to continue investing in the last decade (e.g. in water purification, extension of childcare provision and to some extent also social housing). However, the emphasis was put on economic motives (for childcare) and environmental sustainability (housing and water) rather than equity, as the investments went hand in hand with price increases and cutbacks in social tariffs. In addition to the reduced volume of social investment, the latest (right-wing) government is also systematically re-introducing (quasi-)market ...
This N = 173,426 social science dataset was collected through the collaborative COVIDiSTRESS Global Survey – an open science effort to improve understanding of the human experiences of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic between 30th March and 30th May, 2020. The dataset allows a cross-cultural study of psychological and behavioural responses to the Coronavirus pandemic and associated government measures like cancellation of public functions and stay at home orders implemented in many countries. The dataset contains demographic background variables as well as measures of Asian Disease Problem, perceived stress (PSS-10), availability of social provisions (SPS-10), trust in various authorities, trust in governmental measures to contain the virus (OECD trust), personality traits (BFF-15), information behaviours, agreement with the level of government intervention, and compliance with preventive measures, along with a rich pool of exploratory variables and written experiences. A global consortium from 39 countries and regions worked together to build and translate a survey with variables of shared interests, and recruited participants in 47 languages and dialects. Raw plus cleaned data and dynamic visualizations are available.
This N = 173,426 social science dataset was collected through the collaborative COVIDiSTRESS Global Survey – an open science effort to improve understanding of the human experiences of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic between 30th March and 30th May, 2020. The dataset allows a cross-cultural study of psychological and behavioural responses to the Coronavirus pandemic and associated government measures like cancellation of public functions and stay at home orders implemented in many countries. The dataset contains demographic background variables as well as measures of Asian Disease Problem, perceived stress (PSS-10), availability of social provisions (SPS-10), trust in various authorities, trust in governmental measures to contain the virus (OECD trust), personality traits (BFF-15), information behaviours, agreement with the level of government intervention, and compliance with preventive measures, along with a rich pool of exploratory variables and written experiences. A global consortium from 39 countries and regions worked together to build and translate a survey with variables of shared interests, and recruited participants in 47 languages and dialects. Raw plus cleaned data and dynamic visualizations are available.