Laboratory

Migration and Mobility

At a Glance Projects Publications Team

Research Area

Measuring and Modeling Migration and Mobility

Migration and mobility represent a significant source of population change, with broad societal and economic implications. Accurate estimates and statistics are therefore needed to improve our understanding of the causes and consequences of human movements. However, official data sources are often insufficient and highly heterogeneous, making cross-country comparisons challenging. This is further aggravated in times of crises, such as natural disasters or conflicts, when it becomes crucial to understand the scale, patterns, and characteristics of displaced populations for humanitarian and policy responses.

Projects conducted in this research area leverage a variety of data sources, together with statistical methods and computational models, to compensate for the limitations of official data and provide high-quality estimates of migration and mobility.

A central set of research projects aims at improving estimates of international and internal migration flows and stocks while also enabling future predictions: We integrate multiple migration data sources, such as population registers and population surveys, with more fine-grained geographic and temporal information derived from digital traces. Using a Bayesian statistical modeling approach, we generate estimates of migration flows between pairs of countries and over time, and we aim at providing accurate and timely predictions of migration events. One key aspiration is to develop a synthetic database, the Human Migration Database, as a novel and reliable source of high-quality and harmonized estimates of international migration at different levels of temporal and geographic granularity. Whereas the focus is currently on European countries, we plan to extend the database and include more countries in the future. Consistent and high-quality estimates offered by the Human Migration Database will serve as the basis for testing and advancing migration theories. Additionally, we examine the factors that influence migration and mobility patterns, as well as the outcomes and consequences of such movements, with substantial impact on policy decision-making.

A second set of research projects centers around studying patterns and trajectories of migration and short-term mobility. We focus on situations of social impact, often with humanitarian goals, when accurate data are much needed for rapid response but often scarce or unavailable. This is the case with shocks, such as natural disasters, disease outbreaks, and international conflicts. For example, using the 2015-2016 Zika virus outbreak in Colombia as a case study, we have shown that even highly aggregated information obtained from mobile phone data is sufficient to parameterize models that outperform predictions of the epidemic outcomes generated by relying only on traditional data sources or on synthetic mobility models based on such data. These projects thus delve into leveraging various sources of data and integrating them into statistical and computational models in order to provide novel insights, increase situational awareness, and inform policy-makers, based on evidence.

Projects of this Research Area