Community Evolution in International Migration Top1 Networks

Abstract

Focusing on each country’s topmost destination/origin migration relation with other countries, this study builds top1 destination networks and top1 origin networks in order to understand their skeletal construction and community dynamics. Each top1 network covers approximately 50% of the complete migrant network stock for each decade between 1960 and 2000. We investigate the community structure by implementing the Girvan-Newman algorithm and compare the number of components and communities to illustrate their differences. We find that (i) both top1 networks (origin and destination) exhibited communities with a clear structure and a surprising evolution, although 80% edges persist between each decade; (ii) top1 destination networks focused on developed countries exhibiting shorter paths and preferring more advance countries, while top1 origin networks focused both on developed as well as more substantial developing nations that presented a longer path and more stable groups; (iii) only few countries have a decisive influence on community evolution of both top1 networks. USA took the leading position as a destination country in top1 destination networks, while China and India were the main Asian emigration countries in top1 origin networks; European countries and the Russian Federation played an important role in both.

Structure and Dynamic of Global Population Migration Network

“…However, from the perspective of statistics, authoritative institutions generally only provide data on the composition of immigrants (immigration stock data), such as the "UN Global Migration database" [38] and "World Bank Global Bilateral Migration database" [39], which cover most of the countries in the world. Some existing global migration networks are directly based on the immigrant stock data, which could represent past flow quantities [5,29,31].…”

“…In the tide of globalization, the scale and diversity of international migration are substantially increasing [1,2]. In 2015, approximately 244 million people, or 3.3% of the world's population, lived in a country other than their birthplace [3,4], and this value is forecasted to double by 2050 [5]. Population migration could bring important effects on both importing and exporting countries [6][7][8], and some scholars have used quantitative models to analyze the influencing factors, evolution patterns, and trends of global population migration [2,9].…”

“…And it can show the overall structure and statistical characteristics of the system more clearly, such as in biological systems [24], cortical circuits [25], and geographic maps [26]. In recent years, some researchers have used the complex network method to study international migration and have achieved some preliminary results [5].…”

“…Porat and Benguigui analyzed the degree distribution and connectivity of global migration networks and classified 145 destination countries into three classes [33]. Some scholars decomposed the world migration network into communities and analyzed its structure evolution [5], along with the glocalization, polarization, and globalization of the network [34]. In addition, it can also help conventional models to describe multilateral relations more scientifically, as Tranos analyzed the topology of a migration network and proposed the pull and push factors behind international migration flows between OECD countries with the network method and gravity model [35].…”

Network analysis of internal migration in Croatia

“…As we mentioned in the introduction, network studies on human migration were generally very rarely performed, especially those on internal migration, using fine-grained data of migration between human settlements. Dividing the previous research in terms of geographies, where migration have been investigated as a complex network, most commonly researched is migration at the global international level (the global intercountry migration), in the works by [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. The next most frequently covered geography is the US (inter-county US migration), analysed in the works by [9][10][11].…”