Abstract
This article examines the relationship between the structure of migration flows and the international competitiveness of European Union countries. The relevance of the topic is driven by the growing intensity of migration processes in the EU and the need to understand their impact on the economic potential of recipient countries in an environment of heightened international competition. To comprehensively reflect the structure of migration flows, a system of five indicators was developed, covering geographic, demographic, qualification, integration, and motivational dimensions. Based on these indicators, EU countries were clustered using hierarchical clustering (Ward’s method) and k-means, yielding four typological groups with qualitatively distinct migration profiles: post-socialist countries with low migration intensity; small economies with high-skilled migration; countries with labour-oriented migration and high migrant employment; and large economies with complex and heterogeneous flow structures. The robustness of the resulting partition was confirmed by the convergence of both methods and the statistical significance of all five indicators. To assess the effect of cluster membership on the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI), a regression model was constructed with macroeconomic controls – GDP per capita and gross capital formation. The dominant determinant of competitiveness was found to be the level of economic development, while cluster membership is not an independently statistically significant factor once macroeconomic controls are introduced. This result is interpreted not as the absence of a relationship between migration flow structure and competitiveness, but as the absorption of the migration effect by economic variables. The findings outline directions for further research involving the direct inclusion of migration indicators in analytical models and the extension of the analysis to dynamic panel data.