Abstract
Our paper focuses on the formation and existence of migration networks in the OECD countries. Immigrant networks, or spatial concentration of immigrants from the same region, can be observed in many countries that are net receiver of migration flows. We construct an econometric model for checking for dependency between the number of recent immigrants and the stocks of foreign population at a given country; this is tested against the alternative hypothesis of the dominating influence of economic factors on migration. Using the data from selected OECD countries we find an empirical verification of immigrants’ networking both for the whole volume of foreign immigrants’ inflow and by selected nationalities. Our conclusions show that migration networks exist and are abundant in migration communities in various countries worldwide. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n2p501
Highlights
Human beings live in communities and form even small groups within large communities
We are trying to test the hypothesis of international immigrants’ networks formation based on the ethnic origin versus the hypothesis of migration networks formed on the basis of economic incentives in the target country
On of the most important features of migration is immigrants’ networking: without support the established immigrants provide for their new compatriots the volume of worldwide migration would be substantially smaller
Summary
Human beings live in communities and form even small groups within large communities. There is a large immigrants’ community of Tamils in Switzerland, Turks in Germany, Italians in Argentina, Albanians and Bosnians in Italy, Ukrainians in the Czech Republic, Romanians in Italy, or Mexicans in the U.S While in some cases the formation of immigrants’ networks is influenced by the geographic proximity of the host and target countries (i.e. Mexico and U.S or Albania and Italy), in other cases it might be the language proximity (i.e. Romania and Italy), while there are cases when one has a reason to believe that there are some other determinants of the process of migrants’ networking (see e.g. Nae, 2013) It seems that in a large number of cases ethnic and language similarities do matter and spatial characteristics create basis for such networks’ formation: for instance, there are Macedonians from Skopje who constitute large immigrants’ community in Gothenburg, Sweden or people from the town of Siemiatycze in the north-east of Poland who form a large emigrants’ group in Brussels, Belgium. We are trying to test the hypothesis of international immigrants’ networks formation based on the ethnic (geographical) origin versus the hypothesis of migration networks formed on the basis of economic incentives in the target country (county of immigration)
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