Looking for a better future: modeling migrant mobility
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Applied Network Science
RESEARCH
Open Access
Looking for a better future: modeling migrant mobility Isabella Loaiza Saa* , Matej Novak, Alfredo J. Morales *Correspondence: [email protected] MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA, USA
and Alex Pentland
Abstract Massive migrations have become increasingly prevalent over the last decades. A recent example is the Venezuelan migration crisis across South America, which particularly affects neighboring countries like Colombia. Creating an effective response to the crisis is a challenge for governments and international agencies, given the lack of information about migrants’ location, flows and behaviors within and across host countries. For this purpose it is crucial to map and understand geographic patterns of migration, including spatial mobility and dynamics over time. The aim of this paper is to uncover mobility and economic patterns of migrants that left Venezuela and migrated into Colombia due to the effects of the ongoing social, political and economic crisis. We analyze and compare the behavior of two types of migrants: Venezuelan refugees and Colombian nationals who used to live in Venezuela and return to their home country. We adapt the gravity model for human mobility in order to explain migrants’ dispersion across Colombia, and analyze patterns of economic integration. This study is a first attempt at analyzing and comparing two kinds of migrant populations in one destination country, providing unique insight into the processes of mobility and integration after migration. Keywords: Refugees, Migrants, Human mobility
Introduction 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). Hence a better understanding about how they unfold in time and space is vital for their effective management in the near future. Efforts by governments and international agencies often focus on delivering effective responses to the humanitarian crises that arise from forced migrations (Bryant 2005). While tending to migrants’ urgent needs is undeniably important in the short-term, building the foundations for the future of these communities will have more permanent effects on the well-being of both migrants and natives (Alba and Nee 2009). However, polices designed for long-term impact have the potential to either perpetuate or ameliorate the © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creati
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