Marc Helbling: Measuring Immigration Policies
Channel: International Migration Institute
Date: 2015-02-17

About this event: http://www.imi.ox.ac.uk/projects/demig/2014-conference

Marc Helbling presents his paper ‘Measuring Immigration Policies: The IMPIC Database' in Session 7 of the Determinants of International Migration – DEMIG Conference, held at the University of Oxford from 23–25 September 2014.

Abstract
Despite a growing interest in migration questions, it is still not possible to systematically analyse immigration policies across time and a large number of countries. Most studies in this field
have heretofore focused on individual cases. Recently, there have been a series of studies that have proposed policy indices that allow for large-N analyses. It appears, however, that these studies have not always adequately addressed the main challenges of index building, i.e. conceptualization, measurement and aggregation. Moreover, they are for the most part limited to individual policy fields or there is a trade-off between the number of countries and years that are covered. The aim of this paper is to present the Immigration Policies in Comparison (IMPIC) project, which proposes a new and comprehensive way to measure immigration regulations. The dataset covers all major fields and dimensions
of immigration policies for 33 OECD countries between 1980 and 2010. This paper discusses the way immigration policies have been conceptualized, how policies have been measured and aggregated, and demonstrates the potential of such a new dataset.