Migration scenarios: turkey, egypt and Morocco 251
in the three MENA countries and put these in relation to the values we f ind
for the EU.^5 GDP expresses economic power, GNI the resultant earnings, and
LPR the part of the working population that is actually employed.
We restrict our model scenarios to these three characteristics for
methodological reasons. Of course, socio-cultural and other factors such
as political stability or instability are of considerable importance, especially
in the countries in question. However, they cannot be expressed in f igures
and are therefore excluded from our calculations. Leaving them out is thus
not a statement about their value as such; they are treated in depth in the
contributions by Faath and Mattes, and by Nuscheler, in this volume.
The empirical starting-point for modelling our scenarios is the emigra-
tion potential calculated by Fassmann in his contribution to this volume.
This emigration potential is based on the age-specif ic migration rates for
Poland and the demographic prognoses up to the year 2050, but does not
take into account economic disparities between Poland and the MENA
countries. Our f irst step, therefore, is to transfer Fassmanns’ age-specif ic
emigration rates to the conditions of the poorer MENA region. We thus
calculate the ratio of the value of the Polish GDP, GNI and LPR compared
to the GDP, GNI and LPR of Turkey, Egypt and Morocco. The average of
these three ratios is our ‘country-specif ic factor’, with which we weight
Fassmann’s emigration potential. As mentioned above, we assume that
higher economic divergences produce higher emigration potential. So if
the GDP, GNI and LPR of a specif ic MENA country were to equal the Polish
ones, the country-specif ic factor would be ‘1’ and the emigration potential
calculated by Fassmann would apply. As this is generally not the case and
the country-specif ic factors we f ind are higher than ‘1’, the emigration
potential rises. Or, in other words, since GDP, GNI and LPR are generally
higher in Poland than in the MENA region, the thus-modif ied emigration
potential for the MENA region also turns out to be exponentially higher.
For instance, the Polish GDP is 1.42 times higher than the Turkish, the
GNI 1.25 times higher and the LPR 1.14 times. The average of these ratios is
1.27. If we multiply the emigration potential calculated by Fassmann – e.g.,
for the year 2015 (503,000 persons) – with this factor, we get a modif ied
emigration potential of 639,224 persons (see Table 9.1).
Subsequently, we use this modif ied emigration potential to manipulate
the f igures further. We make assumptions as to how GDP, GNI and LPR will
develop in the future in the EU as well as in every single MENA country. For
5 If there are no values for the EU as a whole, we take the average of the values of the member
states of the EU instead.