Samenvatting

Report: Regional
development indicators, Creating a database on regional development indicators at Nuts 2
and Nuts 3 levels - work in progress.
Migration; and more precisely international migration; is currently a ‘hot topic’ for especially policymakers and politicians in EU member states. Our Horizon Europe project PREMIUM-EU focuses on relations between migration and regional development. Ultimate aim of the project is to develop a Regional Policy Dashboard (RPD) that could support policymakers in regions to formulate policies that help to enhance regional development by migration. One of the modules within the RPD, is the regional development effects module (RDEM) that will map the impact of migration on regions. We will reflect on the basic considerations and challenges underlying the development of this RDEM. Starting point of this exploration are the regional development-indicators developed by Andy Pike and others (2016). The goal of this paper is to formulate an approach for assessing the relation between migration and regional development. As Woods et al. (2016) discuss international migration has a transformational impact on rural regions. Therefore migration could be beneficial for the economic, cultural and social development of rural regions and thus innovation in these regions. To this end, we provided an overview of indicators for this relation and conducted a comparative research for various regions in the European Union, using existing data sources and indices, such as EUROSTAT. Our study highlights various theoretical and methodological challenges for carrying out such comparative research. For example, it is challenging to come to a theoretically sound connection of the various indicators. In addition, the availability of data at the regional level is a concern. Therefore, we recommend using additional and alternative data sources and indices, such as European Innovation Scoreboard, to create more complete data sets and a better understanding of the relations between migration and regional development.