dc.description.abstract
Migration is a complicated economic, political, cultural and social issue. From the economic perspective, it means the movement of factors of production from one country to another, thereby changing the relative quantity of factors and returns to all factors of production in the destination economy. This labour market effect is one of the main reasons of controversy on migration. While workers already residing in the destination country who have to compete with immigrant workers feel disadvantaged, employers who hire immigrants are supportive of immigration. Nevertheless, immigrants are at the same time consumers and household producers. Since they are consumers, they increase the demand for all factors of production in the destination country including labour. Thus, migration need not have a negative effect on wages of national workers. Immigration also contributes to the spread of knowledge from the source country to the destination country and thus can lead to economic growth and long-term improvement of living standards at the destination. Due to these reasons, most economists in immigrant destination countries such as the USA and Europe view immigration more positively than the overall populations (Bodvarsson, Van den Berg; 2013). The number of migrants over the world has significantly increased in the last two centuries. In 2013, approximately 3.2% of the world population was living in a different country than their country of birth (UN-DESA, OECD; 2013). It is anticipated that, if the trend continues, the share of immigrants in the total world population will reach 4-5% within 25 years (Bodvarsson, Van den Berg; 2013). Since member states of the European Union are among the most popular destination countries because of their political stability as well as economic and social welfare, immigration is a serious issue for the Union. The Turks constitute the largest immigrant community in Europe (approximately 2.7 million people). Thus, migration is one of the most important socioeconomic aspects with regard to EU-Turkey relations. Migration between Europe and Turkey has been taking place for many decades. Nevertheless, the motive behind migration has changed from nation-building, religious and ethnic reasons in the first half of the 20th century to labour migration, family reunification and asylum seeking in the second half of the century. The European Union of the 21st century is doubtlessly a different organization from the European Economic Community where Turkey had first applied for membership (Brusse, Griffiths; 2004). On the one hand, the policy areas of the supranational organization have increased immensely; and on the other, the number of member states has grown to 28. Not only has this situation made the Union bigger and politically stronger, but also has the so-called ‘enlargement capacity of the EU decreased after the big 2004 enlargement. Moreover, the demographic structure of the Union has changed. vi During the continuing negotiation process, the adoption and implementation of the Community acquis has led to significant changes in employment policies and the functioning of the Turkish labour market (Kluve, 2006). Due to the continued economic growth in Turkey in the 2000s, regions in Anatolia have started to reach higher economic standards. Nevertheless, higher unemployment rates, especially youth and female unemployment rates in East and Southeast Turkey persist leading to internal as well as international migration flows. Political developments continue to be another incentive of Turkish migrants. The point of departure of this dissertation thesis is the above-mentioned dynamic changes in political, economic and demographic structures of the EU as well as of Turkey. The goal of the thesis is to analyse the labour market dynamics in Europe with regard to Turkish immigration after the EU enlargement. Therefore, an agent-based migration model is developed. The first chapter introduces the research goal, scientific and societal relevance, terminology, problems with the international migration data, the research question and structure of the thesis. Chapter 2 provides a historical overview of migration flows between Europe and Turkey. It firstly gives a qualitative description of international migration flows to the EU by phases as defined by Stalker (2002) and Castles, Haas and Miller (2014), respectively. Then, migration patterns towards the EU are described more detailed in decades, followed by the section on migration patterns from Turkey. Chapter 3 serves as the theoretical base of the thesis. It gives a review of sociological, microand macroeconomic, geographical as well as unifying theories on international migration. After comparing the theories in literature, it provides a theoretical framework, which is used as the basis for selecting the determinants of migration in the agent-based model. The aim of Chapter 4 is to illustrate three different demo-economic models found in literature as examples of deterministic forecasting methods: (i) the Birg model (1982) on the interactions of job creation, migration and natural population increase, (ii) IDEM (Italy Demographic Economic Model) a multi-regional model for Italy designed for purposes such as regionalizing national macroeconomic forecasts of the Italian Treasury and the evaluation of economic impacts of regional development plans, and (iii) the International BACHUE model investigating relationships between various demographic, economic and income distribution variables over time in a developing economy. Agent-based models of migration covering different aspects of the phenomenon were reviewed in Chapter 5. Following Klabunde and Willekens (2016) classification, they were grouped in (i) minimalist models, (ii) microeconomic models, (iii) psycho-social and cognitive models, (iv) models based on heuristics vii without direct empirical correspondence, (v) models based on decision theory and direct observation, and (vi) models based on purely empirical, observational rules without mention of a theory. Chapter 6 then provides the first attempt of an agent-based model of migration flows between Turkey and Germany. Using migration data provided by the German Statistical Office (Statistisches Bundesamt), it aims to reproduce the migration patterns from 1991 to 2015, by taking economic and political factors in the source and destination countries and the effects of migrant networks into account. It can be considered as a model based on decision theory and direct observation. It was attempted to model international migration as a result of agents decision based on a number of social, economic, demographic and political factors: age, earnings, employment opportunities, family and kinship networks, political stability in source and destination countries and immigration policies. Hence, Turkish migration was reviewed from a different angle, with a unified theoretical approach. In the final chapter, a brief overview of the theoretical parts and the main results of the model are provided.
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