Territorial distribution of immigrants in Europe

Abstract

Uneven distribution of immigrant population has diverse consequences in countries and societies. We call immigrants those that have a nationality different to the reporting country. Some European regions have an important percentage of immigrant population. This articles aims to quantify this unevenness in the distribution from 1999 to 2019. For this we use segregation indices of the evenness dimension. The three indices we use show that immigrant population is unevenly distributed at European level and at country level. However, this heterogeneity has decreased. We also look for macroeconomic determinants of these indices. We find a very interesting relation between GDP and the indices, as there is Kuznets effect. Being aware that there are inequalities and how different socioeconomic variables can affect is helpful in order to adopt successful policies to enjoy the positive effects immigration can provide.