Heterogeneity of Global and Local Connectivity in Spatial Network Structures of World Migration

Abstract

We examine world migration as a social-spatial network of countries connected via movements of people. We assess how multilateral migratory relationships at global, regional, and local scales coexist ("glocalization"), divide ("polarization"), or form an interconnected global system ("globalization"). To do this, we decompose the world migration network (WMN) into communities-sets of countries with denser than expected migration connections-and characterize their pattern of local (i.e., intracommunity) and global (i.e., intercommunity) connectivity. We distinguish community signatures-"cave", "biregional", and "bridging"-with distinct migration patterns, spatial network structures, temporal dynamics, and underlying antecedents. Cave communities are tightly-knit, enduring structures that tend to channel local migration between contiguous countries; biregional communities are likely to merge migration between two distinct geographic regions (e.g., North Africa and Europe); and bridging communities have hub-and-spoke structures that tend to emerge dynamically from globe-spanning movements. We find that world migration is neither globally interconnected nor reproduces the geographic boundaries as drawn on a world map but involves a heterogeneous interplay of global and local tendencies in different network regions. We discuss the implications of our results for the understating of variability in today's transnational mobility patterns and migration opportunities across the globe.

Structure and Dynamic of Global Population Migration Network

“…In recent years, some scholars have proposed the "globalization of migration" hypothesis and emphasized both the progressively increasing number of countries involved in global migration and the diversification of origins Complexity and destinations [34,56]. Some other scholars offered an alternative understanding, suggesting that, in recent years, globalization did not contribute to an overall increase in mobility possibilities but instead widened the gap between rich and poor countries [57][58][59], leading to polarization of the global migration networks.…”

“…Here, we use the external-internal index (E-I index) to measure the comparison of local and global cohesion, which is widely used in group embeddedness [34,60,61]. We define the E-I index of GMNs as…”

“…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].…”

Structure and Dynamic of Global Population Migration Network

“…In recent years, some scholars have proposed the "globalization of migration" hypothesis and emphasized both the progressively increasing number of countries involved in global migration and the diversification of origins and destinations [42,19]. Some other scholars offered an alternative understanding, suggesting that in recent years, globalization did not contribute to an overall increase in mobility possibilities but instead widened the gap between rich and poor countries [53,34,31], leading to polarization of the global migration networks.…”

“…Porat and Benguigui analyzed the degree distribution and connectivity of global migration networks and classified 145 destination countries into three classes [50]. Some scholars decomposed the world migration network into communities and analyzed its structure evolution [46], along with the glocalization, polarization and globalization of the network [19]. These research results have encouraged us to study population migration more deeply and comprehensively with the recent complex network method.…”