Search "I" for Italy. The Internetization of Migration

Francesco Billari, Bocconi University
Ridhi Kashyap, University of Oxford
Luca Maria Pesando, New York University (AD)
Valentina Rotondi , University of Oxford
Manuela Stranges, Università della Calabria
Francois-Charles Wolff, University of Nantes

The Internet has revolutionized our economies, societies, as well as our everyday life. Many social phenomena are no longer the same as they were in the pre-Internet era, as they have been Internetized. We here study the Internetization of migratory movements, by studying the links between the Internet and migration intentions and behavior, also distinguishing between economic and political migrants. To do so, we leverage different data sources, both at the micro- and macro-levels, including the Gallup World Poll, the Arab Barometer, data on migrant stocks from the Italian Statistical Office, data from the International Telecommunications Union, and unique data from a migrant reception center in Italy. Our results, across the different data sources, point to a positive link between the Internet and both willingness to migrate and actual migration. This link is particularly relevant for economic migrants.

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 Presented in Session 67. Migration Measures: Methodological Issues