“Rethinking Migration: Evidence from the Global Mobility of Scientists,” Emilio Zagheni, MPIDR

POPULATION STUDIES WORKSHOP

Abstract: Migration is often conceptualized as a single, unified process. However, this simplification obscures a fundamental reality: migration is inherently heterogeneous, consisting of diverse flows shaped by distinct drivers and constraints. As a consequence, prevailing models may fail to capture the underlying mechanisms governing mobility, thereby limiting both their interpretability and predictive power.

This talk advances a more nuanced perspective by focusing on a specific and strategically important subgroup of high-skilled migrants: scientists. Leveraging the growing availability of large-scale bibliometric data, particularly from sources such as Scopus, we introduce the Scholarly Migration Database: a novel, global resource that traces scientists’ mobility through longitudinal changes in institutional affiliations. Covering more than two decades and different spatial scales, this dataset enables both fine-grained longitudinal studies and the analysis of aggregate migration flows at global and subnational levels.

Drawing on this resource, the talk presents new empirical insights into the relationship between economic development and academic mobility, documents persistent gender disparities in scientific migration, and quantifies the effects of exogenous shocks on mobility patterns. It also offers new evidence on the interplay between internal and international migration among scientists. The presentation concludes by outlining ongoing developments and future research directions.

Emilio Zagheni is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) and affiliate faculty of the Department of Sociology at the University of Washington, Seattle, where he served as Training Director of the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology. He received his Ph.D. in Demography (2010) and M.A. in Statistics (2008) from U.C. Berkeley. Zagheni is currently President of the European Association for Population Studies (EAPS). Previously he chaired the Digital Demography Panel of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (2015-2022), playing a key role in favoring innovation in population research through collaboration and exchange between demographers, statisticians and computational scientists.

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