Immigration to Western Europe, 1952 - 1982: a time-series analysis of movement to Sweden, France, and Essen

Two contradictory approaches -- an equilibrium view based onneoclassical economic principles and a structuralist view based on labour needs of core economies -- dominate contemporary international migration research. Using a monthly time-series for Essen, Sweden, and France for 1952 - 1982 of immigration by different nationalities, a specific hypothesis derived from the neoclassical view, relating immigration to economic growth and stagnation, was tested using the Box - Jenkins ARIMA modelling approach. The local labour market of Essen provided the only consistent support for the hypothesis. Most migration flows are described by complex ARIMA models. Immigration legislation had a stronger and more direct effect on the strength and timing of flows than economic trends. Predictions based on univariate and bivariate models are not very useful: immigration trends over the past decade are significantly different from earlier flows.