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.
To RSVP, please visit:
http://membership.rss.org.uk/main.asp?group=&page=1321&event=1330&month=7&year=2011&date=07%2F07%2F2011
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