Directorate for Employment Labour and Social Affairs, DELSA COUNTING IMMIGRANTS AND EXPATRIATES IN OECD COUNTRIES: A NEW PERSPECTIVE1 Jean-Christophe Dumont (OECD) and Georges Lemaître (OECD) 2 1 Dumont, JC. and Lemaître G., « Counting Immigrants and Expatriates : A New Perspective », OECD, Social, Employment and Migration Working papers (forthcoming). 2 The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of participants of the National Statistical Offices (NSOs) in the data collection effort and of John Martin, Martine Durand, Enrico Giovannini and Jean-Pierre Garson, who provided comments and advices on a preliminary version of this paper. Contacts:
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[email protected] 1 SUMMARY Since the end of the 1990s, issues related to international migration, and more particularly to the international mobility of highly-qualified workers, are receiving increasing attention from policy-makers. This reflects, among other reasons, the increasing international movements that have been taking place following the fall of the Iron Curtain and in conjunction with the growing globalisation of economic activity. Despite these increased movements and the heightened policy interest in this area, the quality and comparability of international data on migration have scarcely kept pace. In particular, data that are generally available on migration flows do not provide a clear idea of the relative scale of movements across countries and data on total immigrant stocks have suffered from differing national views concerning who is an “immigrant”. In addition to the lack of comparability on immigrant populations, most OECD member countries have little information at their disposal on their expatriates. In developing countries, the question of the international mobility of highly-qualified workers is generally manifested through a concern about the so called “brain drain” and the loss of economic potential which could result from this.