Why Go to France or Germany, if You Could as Well Go to the UK or the US? Selective Features of Immigration to the EU ‘Big Three’ and the United States

Abstract

Building on a new data set which is constructed from a combination of national micro-data bases, we highlight differences in the structure of migrants to four countries -namely, France, Germany, the UK and the US -which receive a substantial share of all immigrants to the OECD world. Looking at immigrants by source country, we illustrate the important role of distance, both geographical and cultural, immigration policies and migrant networks. Differentiating immigrants by their educational attainments, we observe interesting patterns in the skill composition, employment opportunities and wages of migrants to the different destination countries. Focusing on migration between the four countries in our data set, we find that migration within western Europe is small and rather balanced in terms of skill structures, while there appears to be a brain drain from Europe to the US.

Explaining spatial patterns of foreign employment in Germany

“…A cultural environment similar to the home country also fosters migration. Geis, Übelmesser, and Werding (2011) show a positive effect of cultural closeness on the migration decision, whereas Wang, De Graff, and Nijkamp (2016) point out that a region's cultural diversity can increase its attractiveness for migrants. Isphording and Otten (2014) especially stress the positive effect of linguistic closeness.…”

Public beliefs in social mobility and high-skilled migration

“…High-skilled migrants prefer to migrate to other countries, especially to the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom (cf. Peri, 2005;Geis et al, 2011;OECD, 2013). However, answering the question who attracts the most talented to sustain further growth and why is crucial, as most OECD immigration countries face demographic change, and internal solutions for the reduction in the supply of skilled labour is limited (see, e.g., Fertig et al, 2009).…”

Intra‐Eu Migration and Crime: A Jigsaw to be Reckoned with

“…The classification and counting of nationals and foreign nationals is commonplace across Europe (Geis et al . ). Nationality is often regarded as the most appropriate means of measuring migration and international mobility.…”