The migration of scholars is a major driver of innovation and of diffusion of knowledge. Although large-scale bibliometric data have been used to measure international migration of scholars, our understanding of internal migration among researchers is very limited. This is partly due to a lack of data aggregated at a suitable sub-national level. In this study, we analyze internal migration in Mexico based on over 1.1 million authorship records from the Scopus database. We trace the movements of scholars between Mexican states, and provide key demographic measures of internal migration for the 1996–2018 period. From a methodological perspective, we develop a new framework for enhancing data quality, inferring states from affiliations, and detecting moves from modal states for the purposes of studying internal migration among researchers. Substantively, we combine demographic and network science techniques to improve our understanding of internal migration patterns within country boundaries. The migration patterns between states in Mexico appear to be heterogeneous in size and direction across regions. However, while many scholars remain in their regions, there seems to be a preference for Mexico City and the surrounding states as migration destinations. We observed that over the past two decades, there has been a general decreasing trend in the crude migration intensity. However, the migration network has become more dense and more diverse, and has included greater exchanges between states along the Gulf and the Pacific Coast. Our analysis, which is mostly empirical in nature, lays the foundations for testing and developing theories that can rely on the analytical framework developed by migration scholars, and the richness of appropriately processed bibliometric data.

We leverage metadata on over 36 million journal articles and reviews indexed by Scopus in order to estimate migration of scholars based on information on changes in their institutional affiliations over time. We produce a database of yearly international migration flows of scholars, for all countries from 1998 to 2017. We use the open-access database to provide descriptive evidence on the relationship between economic development and the emigration propensity of scholars. Statistical analysis using generalized additive mixed models reveals that emigration rates initially decrease as GDP per capita increases. Then, starting from around 25,000 dollars (2017 constant international dollars at purchasing power parity), the trend reverses and emigration propensity increases as countries get richer. This U-shaped pattern contrasts with what has been found in the literature for emigration rates for the general population and calls for theoretical frameworks to understand the heterogeneous responses of migration to development.

Understanding the factors that explain why people move – or stay – and where they go, is a central goal of migration research. This article improves our understanding of migration aspirations of professionals in Europe by leveraging a previously untapped data source: aggregate-level information on LinkedIn users open to work-related international relocation, accessed through the LinkedIn Recruiter platform. We collected data at regular intervals from Oct. 2020 to Sept. 2021. First, we offer descriptive statistics of proxies for migration aspirations (or lack thereof) for millions of Linkedin users in Europe. Then we approach our questions using a standardization technique, based on gravity models of migration, in order to account for a number of biases in the data, including uneven use of LinkedIn across countries. We found that, in absolute terms, countries in Northern and Western Europe are the most attractive ones when considering LinkedIn users open to work-related relocation (about 60%), followed by Southern Europe (about 40%) and Eastern Europe (30%). We also observed substantial heterogeneity in directionality of aspirations: for example, roughly 20% of LinkedIn users would relocate from Western to Northern Europe, while less than 10% would relocate from Northern to Western Europe. After accounting for differences in population density, geographic and linguistic distances, as well as internet and LinkedIn penetration, we observed that, in relative terms, Southern Europe appears to be a highly desired destination for professionals, indicating that there is potential for changing patterns in actual flows, should more opportunities for professionals arise in Southern Europe.