Laboratory
Migration and Mobility
At a Glance
Projects
Publications
Team
Project
Gender Differences in Migration Patterns: The Role of Gender and Sex in Demographic Models, Estimates, and Data for Migration Research (Dissertation)
Athina Anastasiadou, Jisu Kim, Asli Ebru Sanlitürk, Emilio Zagheni, Helga De Valk
Detailed Description
This project investigates gender as a central and undertheorized dimension in demographic research on migration. Across a number of interconnected studies, it examines the role of gender in international migration flows worldwide, migration flows across Europe, and professional and student mobility, and it explores how the limitations of existing theories and data sources constrain the ability of researchers and policymakers to understand gender-specific migration dynamics. Together, the chapters demonstrate that while migration is deeply gendered in its determinants, processes, and outcomes, the role of gender in migration has received little systematic attention, especially across demographic methods and theories.
The first study synthesizes findings from quantitative research comparing male and female migration patterns. Through a systematic review of more than 6,000 publications covering all regions of the world, it identifies key empirical regularities and gaps. The review shows that women are generally less likely than men to realize their migration intentions, even when holding aspirations constant. Moreover, the existing evidence does not uniformly support the widespread narrative of a global “feminization of migration.” However, the literature consistently indicates that female migrants face labor market discrimination based on both gender and migrant status. The review further reveals that scholarship has prioritized gender comparisons of migration outcomes rather than the processes shaping migration decisions and journeys. Methodologically, most studies rely heavily on survey data, highlighting the need for more diverse and granular data sources, including emerging digital trace data.
The second study evaluates the implications of theoretical blind spots and data scarcity for migration prediction models. It compares deterministic and probabilistic gravity-type models using gender-disaggregated data and finds that these models perform particularly poorly when predicting flows with imbalanced gender compositions. The lack of theoretical frameworks explaining gendered migration patterns, coupled with the limited availability of gender-specific data, undermines the reliability of the forecasting tools widely used for migration research. The findings underscore the need to revise classic migration theories, like rational choice explanations, historical-structural explanations, or continuations frameworks, to explicitly integrate gender, and to develop richer sources of gender-disaggregated migration data.
The third study addresses gaps in understanding of how age and gender jointly shape migration. Using a comprehensive dataset of European bilateral migration flows, it extends the Rogers–Castro model within a Bayesian framework to produce age-gender-specific migration profiles. The study identifies six clusters of age patterns in migration and demonstrates that gender differences in age structure are substantial and widespread. These results challenge common assumptions about “typical” age curves of migration and highlight persistent gendered variation across life course stages, time, and place.
In addition to the abovementioned core studies, three more studies complement this dissertation project. These chapters deal with topics related to gender in international student mobility to the UK, gender differences in professional migration, and gender differences expressed in mobility related to conflict.
Overall, this project advances migration research by demonstrating that gender is not an auxiliary variable, but rather a structuring dimension of migration and mobility. It contributes new empirical evidence, conceptual insight, and methodological tools for analyzing gendered migration processes, and it highlights the need for more theoretically grounded and data-rich approaches to understanding global mobility.
Migration, Projections and Forecasting
Publications
Anastasiadou, A.; Zagheni, E.; de Valk, H. A. G.:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 122:28, e2500874122–e2500874122. (2025)
Anastasiadou, A.; Kim, J.; Şanlitürk, A. E.; de Valk, H. A. G.; Zagheni, E.:
Population and Development Review 50:4, 961–996. (2024)
Anastasiadou, A.; Kim, J.; Şanlitürk, A. E.; de Valk, H. A. G.; Zagheni, E.:
MPIDR Working Paper WP-2023-039. (2023)