A Structural Analysis of International Migration: Focusing on Social, Cultural, and Historical Factors

This study explores the structure of international migration and its relationships with various political, economic, and cultural networks by using data from the OECD. In addition, the study provides a structural analysis of international migration by using network analysis, which has not been applied to this area, and employs a wide range of procedures, including degree centrality, hierarchical cluster analysis, and QAP correlations, to provide a rich description of the international migration network. The results indicate that the network was composed of the following three groups: U.S.-centered, U.K.-centered, and Western European groups. Economic relationships between countries represented the most saliently correlated factor within the international migration network, and telecommunications had a significant relationship with migration. These results have important implications for the relationship between the national-level migration network and data on the pattern of structural connectivity between countries.