Event Date
SPEAKER: Aidan Milliff (Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow in Contemporary Asia, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University)
TITLE: "Who Flees Conflict? A Big Data Approach to the Determinants of Forced Migration"
ABSTRACT: Every year, millions of people encounter political violence and some leave their homes in pursuit of safety. What factors influence whether or not a person migrates to escape conflict? Existing research focuses on a range of factors, from economic resources and political ideology to personality traits and violence intensity. The influence of social networks on migration decisions, however, is often overlooked because empirical social networks are very difficult to measure. We use data from 63.5 million anonymized, geo-located cell phone records to study the migration behavior of over 55,000 people during a 2011-2012 conflict between the Yemeni Government and Salafist insurgents. Our unique dataset allows us to re-construct cell subscribers social networks, and show that the structure of individuals’ social and physical networks are important predictors of migration. We show that not all social ties are equal: broad social networks vs. social networks with influential members have opposite marginal associations with probability of migration. We also show that network structure is correlated with important variables in the literature: Including measures of social network structure changes our understanding of how economic resources and violence exposure are related to migration potential. Our results demonstrate that social ties are important for understanding civilian migration and resilience during conflict.
WEBSITE: https://aidanmilliff.com/ (external link)
SEMINAR DATE/TIME: Thursday May 11th, 2023, at 4:10pm
REFRESHMENTS: 3:30pm
LOCATION: MSB 1147 (Colloquium Room)