Its no secret that the worlds population is on the move, but its rare to get a glimpse of where

that flow is happening. In a study released in Science, a team of geographers used data snapshots
to create a broad analysis of global migrations over 20 years.
The study was conducted by three geographic researchers from the Wittgenstein Centre for
Demography and Global Human Capital in Vienna. The researchers presented their data in fiveyear increments, from 1990 to 2010. Their research is unique, because it turned static census
counts from over 150 countries into a dynamic flow of human traffic.
Migration data is counted in two ways: Stock and flow. The stocks are the number of
migrants living in a country, says Nikola Sander, one of the studys authors. Stock is relatively
easy to getyou just count who is in the country at a given point of time. Flow is trickier. Its the
rate of human traffic over time.
Keeping accurate account of where people are moving has stymied the UN, and researchers and
policy-makers in general, for a while. The European Union keeps good track of migrant flows,
but elsewhere the data are sparse. Static measurements are plentiful, but it is hard to use them to
get a picture of how people are moving on a broad scale, because each country has its own
methodology for collecting census data.
Last year, however, the UN brought stock data from nearly 200 countries into harmony by
erasing the methodological seams between them. To turn this stock data into five-year flow
estimates, the researchers used statistical interpolations from stock data from the UN, taken
mostly from 10-year country censuses, but supplemented with population registers and other
national surveys.

Its not the poorest who migrate the most

While the results of the migration study arent particularly groundbreaking, there are two
interesting insights:
1) Adjusted for population growth, the global migration rate has stayed roughly the same since
around since 1995 (it was higher from 1990-1995).
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2) Its not the poorest countries sending people to the richest countries, its countries in transition
still poor, but with some education and mobilitythat are the highest migratory contributors.
One of the conclusions they make in the paper, is the idea as countries develop, they continue
to send more migrants, and at some point they become migrant-receiving regions themselves,
says Fernando Riosmena, a geographer from the University of Colorado, who did not contribute
to this research, but is collaborating with one of the authors on a future paper.
A few other noteworthy results:

1) The largest regional migration is from Southeast Asia to the Middle East. This is largely
driven by the huge, oil-driven, construction booms happening on the Arabian Peninsula.
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2) The biggest flow between individual countries is the steady stream from Mexico to the US. (In
fact, the US is the largest single migrant destination)
3) Theres a huge circulation of migrants among sub-Saharan African countries. This migration
dwarfs the number leaving Africa, but the media pay more attention the latter because of the
austerity-driven immigration debates in Europe.

Explore the world of migration

The data arent perfect. Riosmena points out that in countries that especially dislike migrants,
like the US and Europe, numbers are often underreported. Still, he says, the data are a very good
indication of the general trends.
Also, amateur data sleuths be warned: Because these flow estimates are taken from 10-year static
counts, they cannot be compared to the annual migrational flows that the UN publishes (which,
as mentioned above, cannot be used to compare between countries).
Sander says she hopes her data will change the way other researchers approach migration.
Inside the discipline, we hope that its going to be the basis for subsequent analysis of the
impact of migration on population, on economies, on aging. Sander and her colleagues have
lined their data up with global remittance flows, and are analyzing what kind of patterns they can
find therein.
You can explore for yourself how regional flows have changed over the past 20 years with this
awesome interactive, from Sander and her co-authors, Guy J. Abel & Ramon Bauer.