Assessing the differentiated impacts of COVID-19 on the immigration flows to Europe

González-Leonardo, M., Rowe, F., Potančoková, M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6115-5952, & Goujon, A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4125-6857 (2024). Assessing the differentiated impacts of COVID-19 on the immigration flows to Europe. OSF preprints 10.31219/osf.io/bsezk.

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Abstract

The immediate effects of COVID-19 on mortality, fertility, and internal and international migration have been widely studied. Particularly, immigration to high-income countries declined in 2020. However, the persistence of these declines, and the extent to which they have impacted different migration corridors are yet to be established. Drawing on immigration flows from Eurostat and ARIMA time-series models, we assess the impact of COVID-19 on different immigration streams to seven European countries. We forecast counterfactual levels of immigration in 2020 and 2021 assuming no pandemic, and compare these estimates with actual immigration counts. We use regression modelling to explore the role of immigrants´ origin, distance, stringency measures and GDP trends at origins and destinations as potential driving forces of changes in immigration during COVID-19. Our results show that, while there was a general decline in immigration during 2020, inflows returned to expected levels in 2021, except for Spain. However, immigration corridors originating from outside the Schengen Area were still hardly affected in 2021. Immigrant´s origin emerged as the main factor modulating immigration changes during the pandemic, and to a lesser extent stringency measures and GDP trends in destination countries. Contextual factors at origin seem to have been less important.

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