Migrant mobility flows characterized with digital data

PLoS One. 2020 Mar 23;15(3):e0230264. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0230264. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

Monitoring migration flows is crucial to respond to humanitarian crisis and to design efficient policies. This information usually comes from surveys and border controls, but timely accessibility and methodological concerns reduce its usefulness. Here, we propose a method to detect migration flows worldwide using geolocated Twitter data. We focus on the migration crisis in Venezuela and show that the calculated flows are consistent with official statistics at country level. Our method is versatile and far-reaching, as it can be used to study different features of migration as preferred routes, settlement areas, mobility through several countries, spatial integration in cities, etc. It provides finer geographical and temporal resolutions, allowing the exploration of issues not contemplated in official records. It is our hope that these new sources of information can complement official ones, helping authorities and humanitarian organizations to better assess when and where to intervene on the ground.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Human Migration / statistics & numerical data*
  • Humans
  • Models, Statistical*
  • Social Media / statistics & numerical data*
  • Transients and Migrants / statistics & numerical data

Grants and funding

MM is funded by the Conselleria d’Innovaci\’o, Recerca i Turisme of the Government of the Balearic Islands and the European Social Fund with grant code FPI/2090/2018. AT acknowledges financial support from the AEI, Spanish National Research Agency, with grant code PTA2017-13872-I and the Government of the Balearic Islands. MM, AT, PC and JJR also acknowledge funding from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, the AEI and FEDER (EU) under the grant PACSS (RTI2018-093732-B-C22) and the Maria de Maeztu program for Units of Excellence in R\&D (MDM-2017-0711). We acknowledge support of the publication fee by the CSIC Open Access Publication Support Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI).