According to a study by the German Ifo Institute, conflicts and persecution in the middle of the decade have driven significantly more people to flee to Europe than economic motives. The Munich researchers analyzed survey data from refugees who were fleeing in 2015 and 2016.
Seventy-seven percent of respondents cite conflicts in the home country as the main cause, but only 21 percent for economic reasons. Two percent cited in the study published today, natural disasters or other reasons.
Reason for flight differently depending on the place of origin
„Contrary to popular belief, we show that before the conflicts that hit the Mediterranean in 2015 and 2016, refugees are better educated than the average in their countries of origin,“ says Ifo migration researcher Panu Poutvaara. Together with co-author Cevat Giray Aksoy of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, he has evaluated the responses of people who arrived in Europe in the middle of the decade through Mediterranean routes.
Their motivation to leave the country was therefore very different, depending on where the refugees came from: more than 90 percent of the respondents from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan and Syria fled because of conflicts in their home country, while this motive for less than ten percent of respondents from Algeria and Morocco were decisive.
Data from 22,000 refugees analyzedIn
total, data from nearly 22,000 refugees aged 14 and over were analyzed: refugees were interviewed in European transit countries such as Greece, Italy, Northern Macedonia, Croatia and Bulgaria. According to Ifo, the response rate of the survey was relatively high at 97.5 percent.
The fact that respondents did not give any „strategic answers“ to the main causes of their flight can be deduced, for example, from the fact that 89 percent of the Moroccans questioned stated that they were responsible for their escape. „The study data are anonymous. The respondents had no reason to make false statements, „said Ifo expert Poutvaara.
