Statistics and Reality Concepts and Measurements of Migration in Europe

Statistics are not synonymous with reality but are, rather, a way of re- presenting the complexity of the world in categories and figures at- tached to such categories. This becomes immediately obvious when we compare the ways in which comparable phenomena – such as interna- tional migration – are statistically represented in different national con- texts. The national statistics used to describe international migration are based on different conceptualisations that are closely related to the history of the respective country as well as to the particular history of migration from and to this country. Moreover, countries have various ways of counting their foreign citizens, foreign-born populations, im- migrants and ethnic minorities in censuses, population registers, aliens registers and permit databases