February 11, 2016 | News | Suessmilch Lecture

Migration, fertility and population replacement in Europe

On February 18, 2016 Tomáš Sobotka from the Vienna Institute of Demography, Austria will give a talk at the MPIDR. He will explain how the migration streams in Europe in the last decades have altered its demographic landscape, especially in relation to fertility.

Abstract

Well before the current migration movements came to the forefront of media attention and public discussions in Europe, the continent became characterised by vast divides in migration trends. Most countries in the West, North, and the South of Europe have seen substantial net immigration from other parts of Europe and from countries outside Europe. In contrast, most countries in the East and the South-east (with an important exception of Russia) experienced protracted population declines since the early 1990s, largely fuelled by emigration. This talk will start by outlining this new division of Europe and the prospect of some peripheral countries and regions becoming depopulated during this century. Then I will give four illustrations of how the migration streams in Europe in the last decades have altered its demographic landscape, especially in relation to fertility. First, I will show that the measurement of demographic phenomena, including fertility, has become increasingly difficult, especially in predominantly emigration countries in Central, Eastern, and South-eastern Europe that have difficulties registering their population movements. Second, I will provide highlights on migrant fertility trends, emphasising a contrast between general convergence in migrants’ fertility to that of the native women in most countries and the increasing contribution of the predominantly young migrant population to births in the European Union. Third, I will discuss the concept of intergenerational replacement, where population renewal is a result of fertility rates combined with migration. Different indicators suggest that some European countries with low fertility, including Spain and Switzerland have actually experienced high levels of intergenerational replacement due to their high rates of immigration. Fourth, providing an example of long-term population trends in Vienna, I show that a seemingly uniform trend towards a declining and rapidly aging population can be reversed by migration.

All these examples illustrate an increasingly common situation in Europe, whereby fertility trends are becoming disconnected from the overall changes in population size and age composition. In many countries, migration has prevented their populations from shrinking and has substantially altered their demographic trends. These examples also highlight the growing need for a joint analysis of fertility and migration in the research on population replacement and on the likely future population changes in Europe. 

About the presenter

Tomáš Sobotka leads the research group on Comparative European Demography at the Vienna Institute of Demography, Austrian Academy of Sciences and Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Human Global Capital. He holds a PhD in demography from the University of Groningen (the Netherlands). His research focuses on fertility and family in low-fertility settings, fertility data and measurement, population and family change in Europe and assisted reproduction. Currently he is principal investigator in the European Research Council funded project analysing fertility and reproduction in Europe in the early 21st century (EURREP, www.eurrep.org). Tomáš Sobotka has helped launching and expanding several data repositories, including the Human Fertility Database (HFD, www.humanfertility.org) and Human Fertility Collection (www.fertilitydata.org) and Cohort Fertility and Education (CFE) database (http://www.cfe-database.org/). 

Time and Venue

Thursday, February 18, 4 p.m., in the Institute's Auditorium

Contact

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The Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock is one of the leading demographic research centers in the world. It's part of the Max Planck Society, the internationally renowned German research society.