Monitoring of the Venezuelan exodus through Facebook’s advertising platform

Abstract

Venezuela is going through the worst economical, political and social crisis in its modern history. Basic products like food or medicine are scarce and hyperinflation is combined with economic depression. This situation is creating an unprecedented refugee and migrant crisis in the region. Governments and international agencies have not been able to consistently leverage reliable information using traditional methods. Therefore, to organize and deploy any kind of humanitarian response, it is crucial to evaluate new methodologies to measure the number and location of Venezuelan refugees and migrants across Latin America. In this paper, we propose to use Facebook's advertising platform as an additional data source for monitoring the ongoing crisis. We estimate and validate national and sub-national numbers of refugees and migrants and break-down their socio-economic profiles to further understand the complexity of the phenomenon. Although limitations exist, we believe that the presented methodology can be of value for real-time assessment of refugee and migrant crises world-wide.

Looking for a better future: modeling migrant mobility

“…Venezuela's fragility index was the most-worsened one in 2019 (Messner and et al 2019) and Venezuelans represent the second highest nationality seeking asylum in 2018 across the whole world (Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Refugiados (UNHCR) 2018). The destination chosen by Venezuelans varies by socio-economic status (Palotti et al 2020). Nearby countries, such as Colombia, are preferred by low-income migrants who travel by land, while far-flung and more economically developed countries are chosen by higher-income individuals.…”

“…3, other variables such as politics could also explain particularities of massive migrations. On a larger scale, a recent study shows that Venezuelan migrants choose their country of destination taking into account the ideology of the ruling party (Palotti et al 2020). The number of migrants in countries whose Presidents are known to strongly support the Venezuelan regime represents a tiny fraction of those living in countries that openly oppose them.…”

“…The Syrian Refugee crisis (Bakker et al 2019) and the displacement of millions of Venezuelans across South America (Palotti et al 2020) are two recent examples of massive migrations taking place around the world. Technological improvements in transportation, unabiding political unrest, armed conflicts and consequences of climate change will only increase the probability, frequency, and scale of such migrations (Pritchett 2003).…”

“…Previous studies on the Venezuelan migration crisis in Colombia use alternative data sources, such as online platforms like Facebook (Palotti et al 2020;Spyratos et al 2019) or Twitter in order to estimate the number of migrants in a timely fashion. Other work has focused on quantifying the effects of migration on local economies and wages (Calderón-Mejía and Ibáñez 2016; Peñaloza Pacheco 2019), and the positive impact of incorporating young migrant workers into Colombia's aging workforce (Reina et al 2018).…”

Gender-based violence and social determinants in undocumented pregnant Venezuelans living in Barranquilla, Colombia: a qualitative approach

“…At the global level, for several years, the massive out ow of the Venezuelan population has been experienced due to political and economic situations, with Colombia being the country that has received the largest population in ux [8]. A signi cant portion of this population group is undocumented [9].…”