Migration motives of non-Dutch immigrants in the Netherlands

Han Nicolaas en Arno SprangersThere is much demand for information on migration motives, not only for the purpose of government policies, but also for statistical purposes, such as population forecasting. However, information on the purpose of migration is lacking in many countries. In the Netherlands, migration statistics are based on information from the municipal population registers, but motives of immigrants are not recorded in these registers. Therefore, additional data on migration motives from the Central Register of non-Dutch nationals of the Ministry of Justice has been used. The data from this Central Register of non-Dutch nationals has, at the individual level, been linked with data from the local population registers.