9 Migration scenarios: Turkey, Egypt and Morocco
Michael Bommes, Simon Fellmer and Friederike Zigmann
9.1 Introduction
The previous two chapters in this volume – by Ulrich and by Fassmann
- are based on demographic analyses that keep constant all social condi-
tions beyond demographic developments in the populations of the three
countries in question. This approach has the advantage that the models
employed are easy to manage, and the numbers produced have a certain
hardiness to them. Yet they remain rather abstract.
The present chapter reintroduces some of the ‘realities’ not taken into
account in these demographic analyses. We enrich the models presented by
Ulrich and by Fassmann by introducing further, mainly economic, variables
using highly aggregated data. Like Ulrich and Fassmann, we do not take into
account the political and socio-cultural developments in the respective coun-
tries, as these cannot be meaningfully introduced into the current models.
9.2 Methods
The scenarios presented in this chapter draw on one of the classic tenets of mi-
gration theory – growing economic differentials between particular countries
or regions lead to increased migration.^1 This approach seems to be fruitful,
because diverging economic dynamics between the European Union and the
MENA countries were observed in the past and can be expected to occur in
the future as well. Turkey, for example, has been catching up economically,
and thus converging, with the EU, whereas the economic performance of the
other MENA states is still very much lower than in the EU (see Figure 9.1).
1 This idea can be traced back to the nineteenth century, as discussed by Hicks (1932) in his
theory of wage dif ferentials, and has been applied to more recent developments by Borjas (1999),
amongst others. For a more detailed discussion of such approaches see de Haas in this volume.
De Haas’ assumption that the poorest do not migrate may challenge our pure theory of economic
dif ferentials as drivers of migration. Nevertheless, we see clear benef its from our approach, the
most important one being that we depart from the stable demographic f igures presented by
Fassmann in this volume and develop them further by adding other important factors.