Following a trail of breadcrumbs: a study of migration through digital traces

Abstract

An accurate estimation of international migration is hampered by a lack of timely and comprehensive data, with different definitions and measures of migration adopted by different countries. The aim of this thesis is to understand whether information from digital traces can help measure international migration. One of the approaches implemented in this thesis is to complement traditional data sources for the United Kingdom (UK) with digital traces data. The Bayesian framework proposed in the Integrated Model of European Migration (IMEM) is used to combine data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and the Facebook Advertising Platform in order to study the number of European migrants in the UK, aiming to produce more accurate estimates of European migrants. The thesis suggests an extension of the IMEM model to disaggregate the estimate by age and sex. Additionally, weekly time series from the Facebook Advertising Platform are analysed to infer trends of change in migration stocks over time. The quality of the data is reviewed paying particular attention to the biases of these sources. The results indicate visible yet uncertain differences between the model estimates using the Bayesian framework and individual sources. The advantages and limitations of this approach, which can be applied in other contexts, are also discussed. It seems that any individual source cannot be completely trusted, but combining sources through modelling can offer valuable insights. The main conclusions are that the data generation process should be examined, digital traces data should be combined with traditional data sources, and that digital traces data might be used to infer trends of change in migration stocks.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Jakub Bijak: orcid.org/0000-0002-2563-5040

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