Around 20 percent of people living in Austria today are international migrants, states the study. Around 276,800 of those are refugees and asylum seekers. In comparison, Germany has around 15.7 percent and the UK and France 14 percent.
The researchers decided to look at the housing situation of refugees in particular because they felt that this area of refugees’ lives was understudied. More data has been gathered about their integration into the labour market or the healthcare system.
On June 26, 2025, we convened our annual Workshop on Migration and Complex Systems, bringing together science and policy for a day of collaborative dialogue. We presented the progress of our project over the past year to our distinguished Science Advisory Board and colleagues from the Ministry of Interior Affairs (BMI). The day began with comprehensive feedback on our research, both at a methodological level and in terms of priority alignment, offering valuable recommendations to strengthen our approach and identify where additional analysis could have the greatest impact.
Following the scientific review, we engaged in focused discussions to explore the policy implications of our research findings. During these discussions, we formally handed over our 2025 report, which synthesizes our recent research and strategic vision for the next phase, allowing for immediate dialogue about practical implementation. Overall, this annual meeting was highly productive and reinforced the importance of sustained collaboration to ensure our work bridges the gap between scientific rigor and practical relevance, addressing complex migration challenges through evidence-based approaches.
The Science Advisory Board includes Dr. Elisa Omodei (Central European University), Prof. Guy Abel (University of Hong Kong), Dr. Julia Teixeira Mourao Permoser (University for Continuing Education Krems), Prof. Peter Turchin (University of Oxford, University of Connecticut and Complexity Science Hub), and Prof. Rainer Münz (Central European University). From the BMI, we were joined by Mag. Thomas Mühlhans, Head of Department V/A/4, whose department manages migration-related funding and serves as Austria’s Single Point of Contact for EU and international projects, overseeing key Home Affairs Funds including AMIF, BMVI, and ISF.
On Friday 27th of June our group was joined by researchers, scholars, and practicioners to discuss the state of the art in understanding the complexities in the study of migration.
On the institutional side, we had some excellent guests. Mag. Peter Webinger, Director of the Department of Migration of the Austrian Federal Ministry of the Interior shared about the current opportunities and challenges that Austria faces in the current international migratory flows. Ivona Zakovska-Todorovska and Saskia Heilemann of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) presented about the data collection and governance work of the IOM in Europe and Austria.
The academic contribution touched upon an incredibly vast array of topics. Guy Abel and Roman Hoffmann presented state of the art datasets of international migratory flows, also showing how environmental shocks like droughts or multiple vulnerabilities to environmental and conflict stress can influence internal migration flows.
Ljubica Nedelkoska presented a novel methodology to estimate countries’ openness to immigration based on de facto characteristics. Julia Mourao-Permoser presented an overview of the work of her research group, which focuses on the ethics of migration politics debates, the ethics of NGOs work in search and rescue, and sanctuaries for migrants. Mathias Czaika offered a reflection on lost occasions and opportunities to integrate complexity in modelling migration, from spatial dynamics to policy issues.
The PhD candidates of the Society Moving research group also presented the work in their PhD projects. Carsten explored new methods to estimate granular migration in- and out-flows in Austria. Ola showed a new approach to estimate the dynamics in legal status transitions for migrants in Austria, with a focus on the journeys through the Asylum system. Guillermo presented cutting edge work on estimating future demand for services in the context of demographic changes. Andrea presented a novel methodology to estimate bilateral remittances flows and the reaction in migrants’ behaviour to natural disasters that happen in their countries of origin.
The discussion was made extremely vibrant and fruitful from the participation of around 30 scholars and practicioners from the BMI, IOM, IIASA, CEU, Donau-Krems University, the University of Vienna, and the Wittgenstein Centre.
The day was concluded with a panel discussion between Peter Webinger, Ivona Zakovska-Todorovska, and Ljubica Nedelkoska, and moderated by Rafael Prieto-Curiel. The panel discussed the lessons learned from the last years of migration research and policy practices, also exploring how to better bridge the gap between the institutional and academic worlds.
This interactive map visualizes sex-disaggregated international migration flows at the subnational level between low- and middle-income countries between the 2005-2010 period. The data is sourced from a collaboration between WorldPop, Flowminder, and the Asian Demographic Research Institute (ADRI). The methodology follows the approach described by Ceaușu et al. (2019).
Navigate the 3D map with ease: Use left-click to rotate, right-click to pan, and scroll to zoom in and out. Explore migration flows from every angle!
Silvia Ceaușu, Dorothea Woods, Chigozie E. Utazi, Guy J. Abel, Xavier Vollenweider, Andrew J. Tatem, Alessandro Sorichetta (2019). Mapping gender-disaggregated migration movements at subnational scales in and between low- and middle-income countries – Funded by the Swiss Confederation, represented by the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), Peace and Human Rights Division. https://dx.doi.org/10.5258/SOTON/WP00673
Visualization created using Pydeck, an open-source library for interactive geospatial visualizations.
This interactive map visualizes sex-disaggregated internal migration flows at the subnational level within low- and middle-income countries between the 2005-2010 period. The data is sourced from a collaboration between WorldPop, Flowminder, and the Asian Demographic Research Institute (ADRI). The methodology follows the approach described by Ceaușu et al. (2019).
Navigate the 3D map with ease: Use left-click to rotate, right-click to pan, and scroll to zoom in and out. Explore migration flows from every angle!
Silvia Ceaușu, Dorothea Woods, Chigozie E. Utazi, Guy J. Abel, Xavier Vollenweider, Andrew J. Tatem, Alessandro Sorichetta (2019). Mapping gender-disaggregated migration movements at subnational scales in and between low- and middle-income countries – Funded by the Swiss Confederation, represented by the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), Peace and Human Rights Division. https://dx.doi.org/10.5258/SOTON/WP00673
Visualization created using Pydeck, an open-source library for interactive geospatial visualizations.
Existing migration models usually rely on population size and travel distance to explain and predict the spatial patterns of migration flows. “Interestingly, however, people often migrate over long distances and to smaller destinations if their diaspora is present in these places. So if there are already people somewhere, others will follow”.
What we can observe is that even with very little information – namely the nationality of people and the size of the corresponding diaspora in a particular destination region – it is possible to reconstruct and also predict migration movements with a high degree of accuracy.
Listen to the paper in our AI podcast generated by NotebookLM Google.
