Forecasting international migration in Europe: a Bayesian view

This book addresses from a methodological perspective a research problem, how to forecast the international migration component in a way that could be then used for population forecasts using the probabilistic approach. All forecasts are made in the conditions of uncertainty, which is an immanent feature of every inference about the future, a key issue in forecasting becomes not to offer a point estimate of the future values of the variables under study, but rather to provide a reliable assessment of the related uncertainty span, ideally, in a coherent and quantifiable manner. It consists of three major parts: an overview of existing theories, methods and models used for forecasting migration flows, followed by a proposition of a forecasting framework based on the Bayesian approach in statistics, and then by a discussion of the predictions from the point of view of forecast users (decision-makers).