The seminar will take place on 06/05/2025, from 10h30 to 11h30, in room PL 5.5.05 (Le Fallstaf, Pleinlaan 5, 5th floor).
Nowcasting Human Migration Intentions Using Internet Search Data
Abstract: Internet search data may reveal people’s intentions to migrate, as aspiring migrants tend to use online search engines to explore migration opportunities. However, unlike official migration statistics, search data may only reflect the bebehaviourhavior of a self-selected subset of the population, raising concerns about its generalizability. This article integrates traditional survey data - Gallup World Poll (GWP) - with Google Trends, search engine market share, and internet adoption rate to examine the extent to which search trends of migration-related topics can serve as proxies for migration intentions. The results reveal that, on a global scale, passport-related search queries strongly correlate with individuals’ intentions to migrate. However, at the country level, particularly in the global south, migration intentions are more accurately predicted by Google search adoption rates rather than search topics per se. These findings underscore the importance of detecting and correcting user selection biases when leveraging digital trace data for migration research, ensuring robust and representative insights into the spatial-temporal patterns of human mobility.
The speaker: Haodong Qi obtained his Ph.D. from Lund University in 2016. He is an economic demographer well-versed in statistics, machine learning, and data science for social research. Currently, Haodong is the principal investigator of the CLIMB project which leverages Big Data and machine learning to better understand and predict Climate-Induced Migration in Africa and Beyond. Since 2023, CLIMB has received generous financial support from the partners of the Belmont Forum: Swedish Research Council, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye, Austrian Science Fund, and US National Science Foundation.
