Migration motives of immigrants with foreign nationality (from 01-01-2018)

This file contains for immigrants with a non-EU/EFTA nationality the migration motive of the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) of the Ministry of Justice and Security. For immigrants with a nationality of one of the EU/EFTA countries, the derived migration target is determined on the basis of the immigrant’s actually recorded behaviour from information in the System of Social Statistical Files. As of this component, the method has been changed. This concerns both the processing of the provided IND migration motives (for immigrants with a non-EU/EFTA nationality) and the diversion of migration targets for immigrants with a nationality of one of the EU/EFTA countries. In addition, for immigrants with a non-EU/EFTA nationality, family migration is distinguished in family reunification and family formation and labour migrants are divided into skilled migrants and other labour migrants. At the IND, only one migration motive is recorded per immigrant. This component contains the motive of the first migration movement since 1998. If a person immigrates to the Netherlands a second time with a different motive, this person occurs twice in the component with the same (first) migration motive. There are 15 different IND migration motives. For the derived migration targets of EU/EFTA immigrants, multiple targets can occur at the same time. The following derived objectives are distinguished: — family migration; — labour migration; — study migration. More information on how to access the data: > https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/onze-diensten/maatwerk-en-microdata/microdata-zelf-onderzoek-doen ### Methodology Starting point for the migration motives of immigrants of non-EU/EFTA nationality, the IND’s (first) migration motives file on 1 January 1998; this was the first delivery of the IND to CBS in this context. The file of 1 January 1999 was then added with only the records of new immigrants or immigrants who still had an unknown motive in the file of 1 January 1998 and now have a well-known motive. This process has been repeated until the latest IND file with reference date 1 January 2020. As in the previous method, CBS links these migration motives to all immigrants who, according to the IND, have immigrated since 1995. Only migrants who are immigrated according to the BRP belong to the population. The immigration date was taken from the BRP. The derived migration target for immigrants with an EU/EFTA nationality is determined on the basis of the immigrant’s actually registered behaviour. For the establishment of the derived purposes, see the separate descriptions of the variables concerned, including asylum, family, work and study. If none of the derived migration targets occur, an immigrant is typified as 'other and unknown '. With regard to the number of study migrants of immigrants with an EU/EFTA nationality, the following should be noted. The number of study migrants is lower than the total number of international students from the EU/EFTA studying in the Netherlands. This file contains only immigrants who have registered with the municipality. Some of the foreign students are not immigrants, for example Germans or Belgians who attend education in the Netherlands, but do not live here. If students do live in the Netherlands, but do not register with a municipality, they are immigrants, but they are not included in this component. It is also possible that students first register at an educational institution while they do not yet have a BSN. Then CBS cannot trace them, and the educational data cannot be linked to the immigrants. This problem also occurred with the previous method. Immigrants with an EU/EFTA nationality who cannot be allocated to one of the derived goals of work, family or study are given an unknown derived migration goal. These may include students who study at private schools or employees who work here through temporary employment agency structures but do not pay taxes in the Netherlands. CBS determines whether people live together on the basis of the BRP, but also uses tax information about the joint declaration or jointly apply for surcharges. If people do that together, CBS assumes that they are a few. However, it takes a while for people to file a tax return, so CBS knows that this is a couple and therefore family migration. In the most recent reporting year, family migrants are therefore slightly underestimated and the category of ‘unknown’ is overestimated. With a subsequent update of the file, more information will be available and these under and overestimations will be restored as well as possible. When comparing the number of non-EU/EFTA immigrants as shown in this file and the number of residence permits granted by the IND, it should be stated that the year of registration of an immigrant in the BRP may differ from the year in which someone obtained a residence permit. ### Population Immigrants who have a non-Dutch nationality at the time of immigration are registered in the population registers of Dutch municipalities.