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Apologies for the cross posting. http://rssenews.live.subhub.com/events/20110517_5/send_to_friend?month=5&year=2011 Event: Environmental and Social Statistics meeting: (Im)migration: attitudes, impacts and projections Starts: Thursday, July 7 2011 at 11:00 Ends: Thursday, July 7 2011 at 17:00 Location: Errol Street, London EC1Y 8LX This meeting will examine the issue of human migration and its impacts from a variety of social and environmental perspectives. Topics to be covered include assessing and understanding public attitudes to immigration at a national level; assessment of the economic and environmental impacts of immigration; and migration forecasting, both in the short (for example in response to European Union expansion) and long (for example in response to anticipated climate change) terms. Human migration and its impacts from a variety of social and environmental perspectives will be examined. Speakers: David Metcalf (London School of Economics) British migration policy and work Jakub Bijak (University of Southampton) The uncertain world of migration forecasts International migration is becoming an increasingly important element of contemporary demographic dynamics, and yet, due to its high volatility, it remains the most unpredictable element of population change. In Europe, population forecasting is especially difficult because good-quality data are lacking. Despite a clear need for reliable methods of predicting migration (and thus also population), indispensable for rational decision making in many areas of social life, the success of migration forecasting was so far very limited. This presentation will discuss various sources of uncertainty in international migration forecasting and the general limits of predictability of population flows. It will be argued that the uncertainty embodied in migration forecasts itself conveys an important message to the decision makers, who will be using the predictions. On the other hand, instead of striving for implausible precision, the policy makers should rather make an attempt to encompass uncertainty within the decision process. In order to facilitate this, some related methodological challenges and possible options for migration forecasters will be sketched. Marian Scott (University of Glasgow) Demographic change and the environment – the 29th report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution Scott Blinder (University of Oxford) Public attitudes to immigration Cecilia Tacoli (International Institute for Environment and Development) Long-term migration projections and the impacts of climate change Payment will be required, contact [log in to unmask] for a booking form; lunch plus tea/coffee included. Meeting contacts: email Richard Chandler ([log in to unmask]) for ESS; email Jouni Kuha ([log in to unmask]) for Social Statistics Section Registration: 10.30am The meeting topic should be of interest to a wide audience. Apart from social and environmental statisticians, it should be of interest to representatives from relevant government departments and NGOs (the Royal Commission on environmental pollution and the Royal Society are both publishing reports on this topic about now, so there is clearly a wide interest in it) as well as potentially from media representatives. It will be necessary to ensure an appropriate balance of UK and international perspectives in the talks to maximize potential audience interest – for example, some specific focus on UK issues will be attractive to those in relevant government departments, whereas the international perspective is likely to pull in people from NGOs and academic organisations concerned with international development. ****************************************************** Please note that if you press the 'Reply' button your message will go only to the sender of this message. If you want to reply to the whole list, use your mailer's 'Reply-to-All' button to send your message automatically to [log in to unmask] Disclaimer: The messages sent to this list are the views of the sender and cannot be assumed to be representative of the range of views held by subscribers to the Radical Statistics Group. To find out more about Radical Statistics and its aims and activities and read current and past issues of our newsletter you are invited to visit our web site www.radstats.org.uk. *******************************************************