What factors determine which countries people migrate to? Tim Müller from the Berlin Institute for Empirical Integration and Migration Research (BIM) has analysed this in a study of 160 countries. According to the study, important pull factors for migration are not so much social benefits, but rather good job opportunities, democratic conditions and the national language.
In your "Junior Research Group Migration and the Welfare State", you analysed the hypothesis that refugees prefer to migrate to countries with good welfare systems. Why is that?
Tim Müller: The argument has played a major role in the political and public discourse on migration - usually with populist intentions - since the 1990s. ...
’The role of social benefits for migration is overestimated’
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