The European Union is struggling with the gravest crisis since its founding. Opinions differ not only about what to do but on the scope and nature of the challenge. Where to get information? PWN looks at data sources for analyzing - or at least trying to understand - the European refugee crisis. Number 1: EUROSTAT
What is EUROSTAT? It's the EU's official statistical office. It's mission? "to be the leading provider of high quality statistics on Europe."
Countries collect and verify the data before sending it to Eurostat which consolidates it using normalized methodology.
Eurostat publishes data on many subjects: demographics, economics, industry, trade and much more (see list here). Among its publications are detailed data on asylum applicants to EU countries. The data is presented and graphed. Some of it can be downloaded directly into Excel files. Anyone who wants to report on the refugee/asylum/migrant/immigration question can only improve the accuracy of their reporting by consulting the data of Eurostat.
With Eurostat data, a curious journalist (or citizen) can see not only the global stats, but specifically what is happening in each of the individual countries (spoiler alert: the structure of immigration/asylum in Italy is completely different from that in Germany).
The Eurostat reports on Asylum requests are updated quarterly. This means it's possible to get up-to-date stats as the situation evolves. Compare this to oft-cited census information which is ten years old and pretty much useless in describing the current situation. (How many times have I read articles in the "best publications" that rely on data collected from long before this crisis began!)
Here are a couple of graphs from EUROSTAT to illustrate the kind of data that is instantly available, for free, to anyone curious enough to look. (You can visualize and download detailed data too.)
or, in table form, with the countries of origin (instead of codes)
(Below) Five biggest sources of asylum applicants for each European country. (In some countries the largest contingent of refugees comes from Albania or Nigeria or Libya or Ukraine or Afghanistan, while in others they come from Syria. Might this explain some of the differences in the reactions of these countries? see Eurostat chart here)
Which asylum requests are accepted and which are rejected in the first instance? Well, here, too, there is no such thing as "Europe". And no such thing as one profile of refugees. It's not hard to see the diversity here, if one is curious enough to look.
The EUROSTAT site has links below each chart for anyone who wants to interact with the data - or to download it into Excel for further analysis.
And, of course, there is plenty more information available from EUROSTAT.
And if the writer/journalist cares to dig a little deeper, for example asking "what happens to all the asylum seekers who are rejected?" or "what are all the different realities covered by the word 'refugee'?", there is possibility that the reporting might come a little closer to the reality, and be a little more accurate and informative, (which would be good for everyone).
But, first, the journalist has to want to know...