scholarly journals New frontiers of migration research - making migration information infrastructures visible

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fran Meissner ◽  
Linnet Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Mobility Data ◽  
Information Infrastructures ◽  
Migration Research ◽  
Migration Data ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Migration Flows ◽  
Empirical Implications

The nature and production of migration statistics are in flux. Where there used to be ‘migration data’ produced by states and collated by (supra)national agencies with the aim of understanding and recording migration flows, now there are a myriad unofficial data sources and processing collaborations which produce migration and mobility data as a by-product of both commercial and governmental processes. This paper brings together the migration studies with the Science and Technology Studies (STS) literature to take stock of the theoretical and empirical implications of these new data sources for both migrants and for the links between migration and broader social processes. We identify migration information infrastructures: configurations of data assemblages which involve private and public sector actors, where data originally collected for one purpose (billing customers, sharing social information, sensing environmental change) become repurposed as migration statistics. We explore the implications of such migration information infrastructures for migration researchers: what are the entanglements that such infrastructures bring with them, and what do they mean for the ethics and practicalities of doing migration research?

The Philippine National Recording Systems on International Migration

1987 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 1265-1269
Author(s):  
Benjamin V. Cariño
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Migration ◽  
National Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
Migration Data ◽  
Data Limitations ◽  
Migration Flows

The Philippines is a country of emigration that has been the source of significant migration flows heading mostly to the United States and, since the mid-seventies, to the labor importing countries of the Middle East. However, despite the importance of international migration for national policy, efforts to correct the serious data limitations in the area of migration statistics have been limited and uncoordinated. In fact, most estimates of emigration levels from the Philippines still rely heavily on the data gathered by receiving countries. Filipino data sources and the operation of government agencies charged with gathering migration data will be reviewed briefly below.

A Bridge Too Far?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte P. Lee ◽  
Kjeld Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Information Systems ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Cooperative Work ◽  
Computer Supported Cooperative Work ◽  
Practical Action ◽  
Systems Research ◽  
Information Infrastructures ◽  
Information Systems Research ◽  
Critical Investigation

The study of computing infrastructures has grown significantly due to the rapid proliferation and ubiquity of large-scale IT-based installations. At the same time, recognition has also grown of the usefulness of such studies as a means for understanding computing infrastructures as material complements of practical action. Subsequently the concept of “infrastructure” (or “information infrastructures,” “cyberinfrastructures,” and “infrastructuring”) has gained increasing importance in the area of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) as well as in neighboring areas such as Information Systems research (IS) and Science and Technology Studies (STS). However, as such studies have unfolded, the very concept of “infrastructure” is being applied in different discourses, for different purposes, in myriad different senses. Consequently, the concept of “infrastructure” has become increasingly muddled and needs clarification. The chapter presents a critical investigation of the vicissitudes of the concept of “infrastructure” over the last 35 years.

scholarly journals Comparative Analysis of Geolocation Information through Mobile-Devices under Different COVID-19 Mobility Restriction Patterns in Spain

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Raquel Pérez-Arnal ◽  
David Conesa ◽  
Sergio Alvarez-Napagao ◽  
Toyotaro Suzumura ◽  
Martí Català ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Phones ◽  
Human Mobility ◽  
The Other ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Experimental Setting ◽  
Mobile Data ◽  
Restriction Patterns ◽  
Mobility Data ◽  
The World ◽  
Proper Interpretation

The COVID-19 pandemic is changing the world in unprecedented and unpredictable ways. Human mobility, being the greatest facilitator for the spread of the virus, is at the epicenter of this change. In order to study mobility under COVID-19, to evaluate the efficiency of mobility restriction policies, and to facilitate a better response to future crisis, we need to understand all possible mobility data sources at our disposal. Our work studies private mobility sources, gathered from mobile-phones and released by large technological companies. These data are of special interest because, unlike most public sources, it is focused on individuals rather than on transportation means. Furthermore, the sample of society they cover is large and representative. On the other hand, these data are not directly accessible for anonymity reasons. Thus, properly interpreting its patterns demands caution. Aware of that, we explore the behavior and inter-relations of private sources of mobility data in the context of Spain. This country represents a good experimental setting due to both its large and fast pandemic peak and its implementation of a sustained, generalized lockdown. Our work illustrates how a direct and naive comparison between sources can be misleading, as certain days (e.g., Sundays) exhibit a directly adverse behavior. After understanding their particularities, we find them to be partially correlated and, what is more important, complementary under a proper interpretation. Finally, we confirm that mobile-data can be used to evaluate the efficiency of implemented policies, detect changes in mobility trends, and provide insights into what new normality means in Spain.

Leveraging census data to study migration flows in Latin America and the Caribbean: an assessment of the available data sources

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julieta Bengochea Soria ◽  
Emanuele Del Fava ◽  
Victoria Prieto Rosas ◽  
Emilio Zagheni
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Migration Flows

The Impact of the Movement of Labour: Results from a Model of Bilateral Migration Flows

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1850240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terrie L. Walmsley ◽  
Alan Winters ◽  
Amer Ahmed
Keyword(s):  
Developing Economies ◽  
Migration Model ◽  
Global Migration ◽  
Developed Economies ◽  
Migration Data ◽  
Economics Literature ◽  
Unskilled Labour ◽  
Migration Flows ◽  
The Impact

The economics literature increasingly recognizes the importance of migration. In this paper, a bilateral global migration model is developed to investigate the impact of lifting restrictions on the movement of labour. Quotas on skilled and unskilled labour in the developed economies are increased by 3% of their labour forces, with the additional labour supplied by developing economies. This paper improves upon the previous work of Walmsley and Winters (2005). A critical weakness of the previous work was that it was unable to capture the impacts of specific bilateral migration flows or liberalizations between countries. This paper uses a bilateral global migration model that exploits migration data obtained from Parsons, Skeldon, Winters, and Walmsley (2007) that allow the model to account for bilateral migration flows. The results confirm that restrictions on migration impose significant costs on nearly all countries, with the modest liberalization increasing global GDP by US$ 288 billion. All of the developed (labour importing) economies gain in terms of real incomes. While results differ across the developing (labour exporting) economies, most gain as a result of the higher remittances sent home.

scholarly journals Modelling Representative Population Mobility for COVID-19 Spatial Transmission in South Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Potgieter ◽  
I. N. Fabris-Rotelli ◽  
Z. Kimmie ◽  
N. Dudeni-Tlhone ◽  
J. P. Holloway ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Human Mobility ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Population Mobility ◽  
Mobility Patterns ◽  
Mobility Data ◽  
The World ◽  
Spatial Weight ◽  
Data Source ◽  
Reduced Mobility ◽  
Spatial Transmission

The COVID-19 pandemic starting in the first half of 2020 has changed the lives of everyone across the world. Reduced mobility was essential due to it being the largest impact possible against the spread of the little understood SARS-CoV-2 virus. To understand the spread, a comprehension of human mobility patterns is needed. The use of mobility data in modelling is thus essential to capture the intrinsic spread through the population. It is necessary to determine to what extent mobility data sources convey the same message of mobility within a region. This paper compares different mobility data sources by constructing spatial weight matrices at a variety of spatial resolutions and further compares the results through hierarchical clustering. We consider four methods for constructing spatial weight matrices representing mobility between spatial units, taking into account distance between spatial units as well as spatial covariates. This provides insight for the user into which data provides what type of information and in what situations a particular data source is most useful.

‘The biggest legal battle in UK casino history’: Processes and politics of ‘cheating’ in sociotechnical networks

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 304-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark R Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Previous Literature ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Sociotechnical Networks ◽  
Legal Battle

Previous literature on cheating has focused on defining the concept, assigning responsibility to individual players, collaborative social processes or technical faults in a game’s rules. By contrast, this paper applies an actor-network perspective to understanding ‘cheating’ in games, and explores how the concept is rhetorically effective in sociotechnical controversies. The article identifies human and nonhuman actors whose interests and properties were translated in a case study of ‘edge sorting’ – identifying minor but crucial differences in tessellated patterns on the backs of playing cards, and using these to estimate their values. In the ensuing legal controversy, the defending actors – casinos – retranslated the interests of actors to position edge sorting as cheating. This allowed the casinos to emerge victorious in a legal battle over almost twenty million dollars. Analyzing this dispute shows that cheating is both sociotechnically complex as an act and an extremely powerful rhetorical tool for actors seeking to prevent changes to previously-established networks. Science and Technology Studies (STS) offers a rich toolkit for examining cheating, but in addition the cheating discourse may be valuable to STS, enlarging our repertoire of actor strategies relevant to sociotechnical disputes.

General Theory in the Study of Migration: Current Needs and Difficulties

1968 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-18
Author(s):  
J. J. Mangalam ◽  
Harry K. Schwarzweller
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Current Literature ◽  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Theory Building ◽  
Extensive Review ◽  
Migration Research ◽  
Migration Data ◽  
Recent Trends

The need for a more comprehensive, general theoretical approach to the study of migration is widely recognized by sociologists and other behavioral scientists. At present, no major synthesizing effort, directly relevant to the concerns of sociologists, exists. Against a background of recent trends and lines of inquiry in migration research, drawn from an extensive review of the current literature, probable reasons are suggested for this “lag” in general theory-building. In addition to a number of misconceptions about the nature of migration, which continue to prevail, and difficulties stemming from the sources of migration data, which reinforce those misconceptions, the study of migration has suffered from a lack of concern on the part of our leading sociological theorists.

scholarly journals Understanding Immobility: Moving Beyond the Mobility Bias in Migration Studies

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 328-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerilyn Schewel
Keyword(s):  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Analytical Tool ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Migration Research ◽  
Migration Flows ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Migration Theories

This article suggests that there is a mobility bias in migration research: by focusing on the “drivers” of migration — the forces that lead to the initiation and perpetuation of migration flows — migration theories neglect the countervailing structural and personal forces that restrict or resist these drivers and lead to different immobility outcomes. To advance a research agenda on immobility, it offers a definition of immobility, further develops the aspiration-capability framework as an analytical tool for exploring the determinants of different forms of (im)mobility, synthesizes decades of interdisciplinary research to help explain why people do not migrate or desire to migrate, and considers future directions for further qualitative and quantitative research on immobility.

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