Migration among EU Countries: Underlying Fundamentals

Abstract

This paper investigated the immigration flow among periphery and core European countries to find out what are the most important factors shaping immigration trends. Using quarterly data for the period of 1990-2016 for immigration from Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain to core European countries including: Germany, Netherlands, and Sweden, the results of this study suggest that pull economic factors such as GDP per capita and unemployment rate in the destination countries are the more important factors shaping the immigration trend than the push factors including labor reforms. The higher the unemployment rate in the destination the less migrants flow to these countries. The results indicate that the labor reforms in the origin country don’t have statistically significant impacts on the immigration trends.