Quantifying International Migration: A Database of Bilateral Migrant Stocks

By Christopher A. Parsons, R. Skeldon, T. Walmsley, L. A. Winters. 2007

189 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper introduces four versions of an international bilateral migration stock database for 226 by 226 countries and territories. The first three versions each consist of two matrices, the first containing migrants defined by country of birth, that is, the foreign-born population; the second, by nationality, that is, the foreign population. Wherever possible, the information is collected from the 2000 round of censuses, though older data are included where this information was unavailable. The first version of the matrices contains as much data as could be collated at the time of writing but also contains gaps. The later versions progressively use a variety of techniques to estimate the missing data. The final matrix, comprising only the foreign-born, attempts to reconcile all of the available information to provide the researcher with a single and complete matrix of international bilateral migrant stocks. The final section of the paper describes some of the patterns evident in the database. For example, immigration to the United States is dominated by Latin America, whereas Western European immigration draws heavily on Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Mediterranean region. Over one-third of world migration is from developing to industrial countries and about a quarter between developing countries. Intra-developed country and intra-FSU (former Soviet Union) flows each account for about 15 percent of the total. Over half of migration is between countries with linguistic ties. Africa accounts for 8 percent of Western Europe's immigration and much less of that to other rich regions.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9e2f77df81cc8d9558c12a2dfc0347539900e397

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Citations in the corpus

Estimates of Global Bilateral Migration Flows by Gender between 1960 and 20151 (2018, background): “Piper (2005) and Zlotnik (2003) noted an overall rise in the share of female in migrant stocks, rising from 46.”
Ethnic Networks, Information, and International Trade: Revisiting the Evidence (2009, methodology): “In order to check the existence of migrant networks, we utilize the World Bank international bilateral migration stock database which is available for 226 countries and territories and is described in detail by Parsons et al. (2007). Rather than including all persons with any Chinese ancestry, the W”
The Globalization of Migration: Has the World Become More Migratory? 1 (2014, methodology): “2The GBMD has its origins in the pioneering work carried out at the University of Sussex and was later expanded by the World Bank and the United Nations Population Division (see Parsons et al. (2007)).”
International Migration, Transfers of Norms and Home Country Fertility (2008, unknown): “The econometric analysis is based on a new database of international bilateral migration for the year 2000 (Parsons et al. 2007) that covers all countries and territories.”
Immigrant remittances and the venture investment environment of developing countries (2011, methodology): “…i from region j with a Herfindahl, Hirschman Index greater than 0.34, indicating high concentration of immigrants in all possible host countries in 2000 (fixed over all years t) United Nations (2004); Parsons et al. (2007) þ Immigrant remittances and venture investment Paul M Vaaler A U T H O R C O”
Native language, spoken language, translation and trade (2014, unknown): “It is described in detail in Parsons et al. (2007).”
A Global Assessment of Human Capital Mobility: The Role of Non-OECD Destinations (2014, unknown): “pleted census rounds, thereby extending the work of Parsons et al. (2007). However, while OPSW significantly broadens the time, gender and geographical coverage of the available”
Determinants and Macroeconomic Impact of Remittances in Sub-Saharan Africa (2009, unknown): “We address these issues as follows: First, to obtain the stock of expatriates from home at some period, we make use of the international bilateral migration database of Parsons et al. (2007).”