Network analysis of international migration

Abstract

Our study employs the network approach to the problem of international migration. During the last years, migration has attracted a lot of attention and has been examined from many points of view. However, very few studies considered it from the network perspective. The international migration can be represented as a network (or weighted directed graph) where the nodes correspond to countries and the edges correspond to migration flows. The main focus of our study is to reveal a set of critical or central elements in the network. To do it, we calculated different existing and new centrality measures. In our research the United Nations International Migration Flows Database (version 2015) was used. As a result, we obtained information on critical elements for the migration process in 2013.