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Article Contents

1. introduction, 2. studies of migration studies, 3. methodology, 4. metadata on migration studies, 5. topic clusters in migration studies, 6. trends in topic networks in migration studies, 7. conclusions, acknowledgements.

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Mapping migration studies: An empirical analysis of the coming of age of a research field

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Asya Pisarevskaya, Nathan Levy, Peter Scholten, Joost Jansen, Mapping migration studies: An empirical analysis of the coming of age of a research field, Migration Studies , Volume 8, Issue 3, September 2020, Pages 455–481, https://doi.org/10.1093/migration/mnz031

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Migration studies have developed rapidly as a research field over the past decades. This article provides an empirical analysis not only on the development in volume and the internationalization of the field, but also on the development in terms of topical focus within migration studies over the past three decades. To capture volume, internationalisation, and topic focus, our analysis involves a computer-based topic modelling of the landscape of migration studies. Rather than a linear growth path towards an increasingly diversified and fragmented field, as suggested in the literature, this reveals a more complex path of coming of age of migration studies. Although there seems to be even an accelerated growth for migration studies in terms of volume, its internationalisation proceeds only slowly. Furthermore, our analysis shows that rather than a growth of diversification of topics within migration topic, we see a shift between various topics within the field. Finally, our study shows that there is no consistent trend to more fragmentation in the field; in contrast, it reveals a recent recovery of connectedness between the topics in the field, suggesting an institutionalisation or even theoretical and conceptual coming of age of migration studies.

Migration studies have developed rapidly as a research field in recent decades. It encompasses studies on all types of international and internal migration, migrants, and migration-related diversity ( King, 2002 ; Scholten, 2018 ). Many scholars have observed the increase in the volume of research on migration ( Massey et al., 1998 ; Bommes and Morawska, 2005 ; Scholten et al., 2015 ). Additionally, the field has become increasingly varied in terms of links to broader disciplines ( King, 2012 ; Brettell and Hollifield, 2014 ) and in terms of different methods used ( Vargas-Silva, 2012 ; Zapata-Barrero and Yalaz, 2018 ). It is now a field that has in many senses ‘come of age’: it has internationalised with scholars involved from many countries; it has institutionalised through a growing number of journals; an increasing number of institutes dedicated to migration studies; and more and more students are pursuing migration-related courses. These trends are also visible in the growing presence of international research networks in the field of migration.

Besides looking at the development of migration in studies in terms of size, interdisciplinarity, internationalisation, and institutionalisation, we focus in this article on the development in topical focus of migration studies. We address the question how has the field of migration studies developed in terms of its topical focuses? What topics have been discussed within migration studies? How has the topical composition of the field changed, both in terms of diversity (versus unity) and connectedness (versus fragmentation)? Here, the focus is not on influential publications, authors, or institutes, but rather on what topics scholars have written about in migration studies. The degree of diversity among and connectedness between these topics, especially in the context of quantitative growth, will provide an empirical indication of whether a ‘field’ of migration studies exists, or to what extent it is fragmented.

Consideration of the development of migration studies invokes several theoretical questions. Various scholars have argued that the growth of migration studies has kept pace not only with the growing prominence of migration itself but also with the growing attention of nation–states in particular towards controlling migration. The coproduction of knowledge between research and policy, some argue ( Scholten, 2011 ), has given migration research an inclination towards paradigmatic closure, especially around specific national perspectives on migration. Wimmer and Glick Schiller (2002 ) speak in this regard of ‘methodological nationalism’, and others refer to the prominence of national models that would be reproduced by scholars and policymakers ( Bommes and Morawska, 2005 ; Favell, 2003 ). More generally, this has led, some might argue, to an overconcentration of the field on a narrow number of topics, such as integration and migration control, and a consequent call to ‘de-migranticise’ migration research ( Dahinden, 2016 ; see also Schinkel, 2018 ).

However, recent studies suggest that the growth of migration studies involves a ‘coming of age’ in terms of growing diversity of research within the field. This diversification of migration studies has occurred along the lines of internationalisation ( Scholten et al., 2015 ), disciplinary variation ( Yans-McLaughlin, 1990 ; King, 2012 ; Brettell and Hollifield, 2014 ) and methodological variation ( Vargas-Silva, 2012 ; Zapata-Barrero and Yalaz, 2018 ). The International Organization for Migration ( IOM, 2017 : 95) even concludes that ‘the volume, diversity, and growth of both white and grey literature preclude a [manual] systematic review’ of migration research produced in 2015 and 2016 alone .

Nonetheless, in this article, we attempt to empirically trace the development of migration studies over the past three decades, and seek to find evidence for the claim that the ‘coming of age’ of migration studies indeed involves a broadening of the variety of topics within the field. We pursue an inductive approach to mapping the academic landscape of >30 years of migration studies. This includes a content analysis based on a topic modelling algorithm, applied to publications from migration journals and book series. We trace the changes over time of how the topics are distributed within the corpus and the extent to which they refer to one another. We conclude by giving a first interpretation of the patterns we found in the coming of age of migration studies, which is to set an agenda for further studies of and reflection on the development of this research field. While migration research is certainly not limited to journals and book series that focus specifically on migration, our methods enable us to gain a representative snapshot of what the field looks like, using content from sources that migration researchers regard as relevant.

Migration has always been studied from a variety of disciplines ( Cohen, 1996 ; Brettell and Hollifield, 2014 ), such as economics, sociology, history, and demography ( van Dalen, 2018 ), using a variety of methods ( Vargas-Silva, 2012 ; Zapata-Barrero and Yalaz, 2018 ), and in a number of countries ( Carling, 2015 ), though dominated by Northern Hemisphere scholarship (see, e.g. Piguet et al., 2018 ), especially from North America and Europe ( Bommes and Morawska, 2005 ). Taking stock of various studies on the development of migration studies, we can define several expectations that we will put to an empirical test.

Ravenstein’s (1885) 11 Laws of Migration is widely regarded as the beginning of scholarly thinking on this topic (see Zolberg, 1989 ; Greenwood and Hunt, 2003 ; Castles and Miller, 2014 ; Nestorowicz and Anacka, 2018 ). Thomas and Znaniecki’s (1918) five-volume study of Polish migrants in Europe and America laid is also noted as an early example of migration research. However, according to Greenwood and Hunt (2003 ), migration research ‘took off’ in the 1930s when Thomas (1938) indexed 191 studies of migration across the USA, UK, and Germany. Most ‘early’ migration research was quantitative (see, e.g. Thornthwaite, 1934 ; Thomas, 1938 ). In addition, from the beginning, migration research developed with two empirical traditions: research on internal migration and research on international migration ( King and Skeldon, 2010 ; Nestorowicz and Anacka, 2018 : 2).

In subsequent decades, studies of migration studies describe a burgeoning field. Pedraza-Bailey (1990) refers to a ‘veritable boom’ of knowledge production by the 1980s. A prominent part of these debates focussed around the concept of assimilation ( Gordon, 1964 ) in the 1950s and 1960s (see also Morawska, 1990 ). By the 1970s, in light of the civil rights movements, researchers were increasingly focussed on race and ethnic relations. However, migration research in this period lacked an interdisciplinary ‘synthesis’ and was likely not well-connected ( Kritz et al., 1981 : 10; Pryor, 1981 ; King, 2012 : 9–11). Through the 1980s, European migration scholarship was ‘catching up’ ( Bommes and Morawska, 2005 : 14) with the larger field across the Atlantic. Substantively, research became increasingly mindful of migrant experiences and critical of (national) borders and policies ( Pedraza-Bailey, 1990 : 49). King (2012) also observes this ‘cultural turn’ towards more qualitative anthropological migration research by the beginning of the 1990s, reflective of trends in social sciences more widely ( King, 2012 : 24). In the 1990s, Massey et al. (1993, 1998 ) and Massey (1994) reflected on the state of the academic landscape. Their literature review (1998) notes over 300 articles on immigration in the USA, and over 150 European publications. Despite growth, they note that the field did not develop as coherently in Europe at it had done in North America (1998: 122).

We therefore expect to see a significant growth of the field during the 1980s and 1990s, and more fragmentation, with a prominence of topics related to culture and borders.

At the turn of the millennium, Portes (1997) lists what were, in his view, the five key themes in (international) migration research: 1 transnational communities; 2 the new second generation; 3 households and gender; 4 states and state systems; and 5 cross-national comparisons. This came a year after Cohen’s review of Theories of Migration (1996), which classifies nine key thematic ‘dyads’ in migration studies, such as internal versus international migration; individual versus contextual reasons to migrate; temporary versus permanent migration; and push versus pull factors (see full list in Cohen, 1996 : 12–15). However, despite increasing knowledge production, Portes argues that the problem in these years was the opposite of what Kritz et al. (1981) observe above; scholars had access to and generated increasing amounts of data, but failed to achieve ‘conceptual breakthrough’ ( Portes, 1997 : 801), again suggesting fragmentation in the field.

Thus, in late 1990s and early 2000s scholarship we expect to find a prominence of topics related to these five themes, and a limited number of “new” topics.

In the 21st century, studies of migration studies indicate that there has been a re-orientation away from ‘states and state systems’. This is exemplified by Wimmer and Glick Schiller’s (2002) widely cited commentary on ‘methodological nationalism’, and the alleged naturalisation of nation-state societies in migration research (see Thranhardt and Bommes, 2010 ), leading to an apparent pre-occupation with the integration paradigm since the 1980s according to Favell (2003) and others ( Dahinden, 2016 ; Schinkel, 2018 ). This debate is picked up in Bommes and Morawska’s (2005) edited volume, and Lavenex (2005) . Describing this shift, Geddes (2005) , in the same volume, observes a trend of ‘Europeanised’ knowledge production, stimulated by the research framework programmes of the EU. Meanwhile, on this topic, others highlight a ‘local turn’ in migration and diversity research ( Caponio and Borkert, 2010 ; Zapata-Barrero et al., 2017) .

In this light, we expect to observe a growth in references to European (and other supra-national) level and local-level topics in the 21t century compared to before 2000.

As well as the ‘cultural turn’ mentioned above, King (2012 : 24–25) observes a re-inscription of migration within wider social phenomena—in terms of changes to the constitutive elements of host (and sending) societies—as a key development in recent migration scholarship. Furthermore, transnationalism, in his view, continues to dominate scholarship, though this dominance is disproportionate, he argues, to empirical reality. According to Scholten (2018) , migration research has indeed become more complex as the century has progressed. While the field has continued to grow and institutionalise thanks to networks like International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion in Europe (IMISCOE) and Network of Migration Research on Africa (NOMRA), this has been in a context of apparently increasing ‘fragmentation’ observed by several scholars for many years (see Massey et al., 1998 : 17; Penninx et al., 2008 : 8; Martiniello, 2013 ; Scholten et al., 2015 : 331–335).

On this basis, we expect a complex picture to emerge for recent scholarship, with thematic references to multiple social phenomena, and a high level of diversity within the topic composition of the field. We furthermore expect increased fragmentation within migration studies in recent years.

The key expectation of this article is, therefore, that the recent topical composition of migration studies displays greater diversity than in previous decades as the field has grown. Following that logic, we hypothesise that with diversification (increasingly varied topical focuses), fragmentation (decreasing connections between topics) has also occurred.

The empirical analysis of the development in volume and topic composition of migration studies is based on the quantitative methods of bibliometrics and topic modelling. Although bibliometric analysis has not been widely used in the field of migration (for some exceptions, see Carling, 2015 ; Nestorowicz and Anacka, 2018 ; Piguet et al., 2018 ; Sweileh et al., 2018 ; van Dalen, 2018 ), this type of research is increasingly popular ( Fortunato et al., 2018 ). A bibliometric analysis can help map what Kajikawa et al. (2007) call an ‘academic landscape’. Our analysis pursues a similar objective for the field of migration studies. However, rather than using citations and authors to guide our analysis, we extract a model of latent topics from the contents of abstracts . In other words, we are focussed on the landscape of content rather than influence.

3.1 Topic modelling

Topic modelling involves a computer-based strategy for identifying topics or topic clusters that figure centrally in a specific textual landscape (e.g. Jiang et al., 2016 ). This is a class of unsupervised machine learning techniques ( Evans and Aceves, 2016 : 22), which are used to inductively explore and discover patterns and regularities within a corpus of texts. Among the most widely used topic models is Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). LDA is a type of Bayesian probabilistic model that builds on the assumption that each document in a corpus discusses multiple topics in differing proportions. Therefore, Document A might primarily be about Topic 1 (60 per cent), but it also refers to terms associated with Topic 2 (30 per cent), and, to a lesser extent, Topic 3 (10 per cent). A topic, then, is defined as a probability distribution over a fixed vocabulary, that is, the totality of words present in the corpus. The advantage of the unsupervised LDA approach that we take is that it does not limit the topic model to our preconceptions of which topics are studied by migration researchers and therefore should be found in the literature. Instead, it allows for an inductive sketching of the field, and consequently an element of surprise ( Halford and Savage, 2017 : 1141–1142). To determine the optimal number of topics, we used the package ldatuning to calculate the statistically optimal number of topics, a number which we then qualitatively validated.

The chosen LDA model produced two main outcomes. First, it yielded a matrix with per-document topic proportions, which allow us to generate an idea of the topics discussed in the abstracts. Secondly, the model returned a matrix with per-topic word probabilities. Essentially, the topics are a collection of words ordered by their probability of (co-)occurrence. Each topic contains all the words from all the abstracts, but some words have a much higher likelihood to belong to the identified topic. The 20–30 most probable words for each topic can be helpful in understanding the content of the topic. The third step we undertook was to look at those most probable words by a group of experts familiar with the field and label them. We did this systematically and individually by first looking at the top 5 words, then the top 30, trying to find an umbrella label that would summarize the topic. The initial labels suggested by each of us were then compared and negotiated in a group discussion. To verify the labels even more, in case of a doubt, we read several selected abstracts marked by the algorithm as exhibiting a topic, and through this were able to further refine the names of the topics.

It is important to remember that this list of topics should not be considered a theoretically driven attempt to categorize the field. It is purely inductive because the algorithm is unable to understand theories, conceptual frames, and approaches; it makes a judgement only on the basis of words. So if words are often mentioned together, the computer regards their probability of belonging to one topic as high.

3.2 Dataset of publications

For the topic modelling, we created a dataset that is representative of publications relevant to migration studies. First, we identified the most relevant sources of literature. Here we chose not only to follow rankings in citation indices, but also to ask migration scholars, in an expert survey, to identify what they considered to be relevant sources. This survey was distributed among a group of senior scholars associated with the IMISCOE Network; 25 scholars anonymously completed the survey. A set of journals and book series was identified from existing indices (such as Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus) which were then validated and added to by respondents. Included in our eventual dataset were all journals and book series that were mentioned at least by two experts in the survey. The dataset includes 40 journals and 4 book series (see Supplementary Data A). Non-English journals were omitted from data collection because the algorithm can only analyse one language. Despite their influence on the field, we also did not consider broader disciplinary journals (for instance, sociological journals or economic journals) for the dataset. Such journals, we acknowledge, have published some of the most important research in the history of migration studies, but even with their omission, it is still possible to achieve our goal of obtaining a representative snapshot of what migration researchers have studied, rather than who or which papers have been most influential. In addition, both because of the language restriction of the algorithm and because of the Global North’s dominance in the field that is mentioned above ( Bommes and Morawska, 2005 ; Piguet et al., 2018 ), there is likely to be an under-representation of scholarship from the Global South in our dataset.

Secondly, we gathered metadata on publications from the selected journals and book series using the Scopus and Web of Science electronic catalogues, and manually collecting from those sources available on neither Scopus nor Web of Science. The metadata included authors, years, titles, and abstracts. We collected all available data up to the end of 2017. In total, 94 per cent of our metadata originated from Scopus, ∼1 per cent from Web of Science, and 5 per cent was gathered manually. One limitation of our dataset lies in the fact that the electronic catalogue of Scopus, unfortunately, does not list all articles and abstracts ever published by all the journals (their policy is to collect articles and abstracts ‘where available’ ( Elsevier, 2017 )). There was no technical possibility of assessing Scopus or WoS’ proportional coverage of all articles actually published. The only way to improve the dataset in this regard would be to manually collect and count abstracts from journal websites. This is also why many relevant books were not included in our dataset; they are not indexed in such repositories.

In the earliest years of available data, only a few journals were publishing (with limited coverage of this on Scopus) specifically on migration. However, Fig. 1 below demonstrates that the numbers constantly grew between 1959 and 2018. As Fig. 1 shows, in the first 30 years (1959–88), the number of migration journals increased by 15, while in the following three decades (1989–2018), this growth intensified as the number of journals tripled to 45 in the survey (see Supplementary Data A for abbreviations).

Number of journals focussed on migration and migration-related diversity (1959–2018) Source: Own calculations.

Within all 40 journals in the dataset, we were able to access and extract for our analysis 29,844 articles, of which 22,140 contained abstracts. Furthermore, we collected 901 available abstracts of chapters in the 4 book series: 2 series were downloaded from the Scopus index (Immigration and Asylum Law in Europe; Handbook of the Economics of International Migration), and the abstracts of the other 2 series, selected from our expert survey (the IMISCOE Research Series Migration Diasporas and Citizenship), were collected manually. Given the necessity of manually collecting the metadata for 896 abstracts of the chapters in these series, it was both practical and logical to set these two series as the cut-off point. Ultimately, we get a better picture of the academic landscape as a whole with some expert-approved book series than with none .

Despite the limitations of access, we can still have an approximate idea on how the volume of publications changed overtime. The chart ( Fig. 2 ) below shows that both the number of published articles and the number of abstracts of these articles follow the same trend—a rapid growth after the turn of the century. In 2017, there were three times more articles published per year than in 2000.

Publications and abstracts in the dataset (1959–2018).

The cumulative graph ( Fig. 3 ) below shows the total numbers of publications and the available abstracts. For the creation of our inductively driven topic model, we used all available abstracts in the entire timeframe. However, to evaluate the dynamics of topics over time, we decided to limit the timeframe of our chronological analyses to 1986–2017, because as of 1986, there were more than 10 active journals and more articles had abstracts. This analysis therefore covers the topical evolution of migration studies in the past three decades.

Cumulative total of publications and abstracts (1959–2017).

Migration studies has only internationalised very slowly in support of what others have previously argued ( Bommes and Morawska, 2005 ; Piguet et al., 2018 ). Figure 4 gives a snapshot of the geographic dispersion of the articles (including those without abstracts) that we collected from Scopus. Where available, we extracted the country of authors’ university affiliations. The colour shades represent the per capita publication volume. English-language migration scholarship has been dominated by researchers based, unsurprisingly, in Anglophone and Northern European countries.

Migration research output per capita (based on available affiliation data within dataset).

The topic modelling (following the LDA model) led us, as discussed in methods, to the definition of 60 as the optimal number of topics for mapping migration studies. Each topic is a string of words that, according to the LDA algorithm, belong together. We reviewed the top 30 words for each word string and assigned labels that encapsulated their meaning. Two of the 60 word strings were too generic and did not describe anything related to migration studies; therefore, we excluded them. Subsequently, the remaining 58 topics were organised into a number of clusters. In the Table 1 below, you can see all the topic labels, the topic clusters they are grouped into and the first 5 (out of 30) most probable words defining those topics.

Topics in migration studies

After presenting all the observed topics in the corpus of our publication data, we examined which topics and topic clusters are most frequent in general (between 1964 and 2017), and how their prominence has been changing over the years. On the basis of the matrix of per-item topic proportions generated by LDA analysis, we calculated the shares of each topic in the whole corpus. On the level of individual topics, around 25 per cent of all abstract texts is about the top 10 most prominent topics, which you can see in Fig. 5 below. Among those, #56 identity narratives (migration-related diversity), #39 migration theory, and #29 migration flows are the three most frequently detected topics.

Top 10 topics in the whole corpus of abstracts.

On the level of topic clusters, Fig. 6 (left) shows that migration-related diversity (26 per cent) and migration processes (19 per cent) clearly comprise the two largest clusters in terms of volume, also because they have the largest number topics belonging to them. However, due to our methodology of labelling these topics and grouping them into clusters, it is complicated to make comparisons between topic clusters in terms of relative size, because some clusters simply contain more topics. Calculating average proportions of topics within each cluster allows us to control for the number of topics per cluster, and with this measure, we can better compare the relative prominence of clusters. Figure 6 (right) shows that migration research and statistics have the highest average of topic proportions, followed by the cluster of migration processes and immigrant incorporation.

Topic proportions per cluster.

An analysis on the level of topic clusters in the project’s time frame (1986–2017) reveals several significant trends. First, when discussing shifts in topics over time, we can see that different topics have received more focus in different time frames. Figure 7 shows the ‘age’ of topics, calculated as average years weighted by proportions of publications within a topic per year. The average year of the articles on the same topic is a proxy for the age of the topic. This gives us an understanding of which topics were studied more often compared with others in the past and which topics are emerging. Thus, an average year can be understood as the ‘high-point’ of a topic’s relative prominence in the field. For instance, the oldest topics in our dataset are #22 ‘Migrant demographics’, followed by #45 ‘Governance of migration’ and #46 ‘Migration statistics and survey research’. The newest topics include #14 ‘Mobilities’ and #48 ‘Intra-EU mobility’.

Average topic age, weighted by proportions of publications (publications of 1986–2017). Note: Numbers near dots indicate the numeric id of topics (see Table 1 for the names).

When looking at the weighted ‘age’ of the clusters, it becomes clear that the focus on migration research and statistics is the ‘oldest’, which echoes what Greenwood and Hunt (2003 ) observe. This resonates with the idea that migration studies has roots in more demographic studies of migration and diversity (cf. Thornthwaite, 1934 ; Thomas, 1938 ), which somewhat contrasts with what van Dalen (2018) has found. Geographies of migration (studies related to specific migration flows, origins, and destinations) were also more prominent in the 1990s than now, and immigrant incorporation peaked at the turn of the century. However, gender and family, diversity, and health are more recent themes, as was mentioned above (see Fig. 8 ). This somewhat indicates a possible post-methodological nationalism, post-integration paradigm era in migration research going hand-in-hand with research that, as King (2012) argues, situates migration within wider social and political domains (cf. Scholten, 2018 ).

Diversity of topics and topic clusters (1985–2017).

Then, we analysed the diversification of publications over the various clusters. Based on the literature review, we expected the diversification to have increased over the years, signalling a move beyond paradigmatic closure. Figure 9 (below) shows that we can hardly speak of a significant increase of diversity in migration studies publications. Over the years, only a marginal increase in the diversity of topics is observed. The Gini-Simpson index of diversity in 1985 was around 0.95 and increased to 0.98 from 1997 onwards. Similarly, there is little difference between the sizes of topic clusters over the years. Both ways of calculating the Gini-Simpson index of diversity by clusters resulted in a rather stable picture showing some fluctuations between 0.82 and 0.86. This indicates that there has never been a clear hegemony of any cluster at any time. In other words, over the past three decades, the diversity of topics and topic clusters was quite stable: there have always been a great variety of topics discussed in the literature of migration studies, with no topic or cluster holding a clear monopoly.

Average age of topic clusters, weighted by proportions (publications of 1986–2017).

Subsequently, we focussed on trends in topic networks. As our goal is to describe the general development of migration studies as a field, we decided to analyse topic networks in three equal periods of 10 years (Period 1 (1988–97); Period 2 (1998–2007); Period 3 (2008–17)). On the basis of the LDA-generated matrix with per-abstract topic proportions (The LDA algorithm determines the proportions of all topics observed within each abstract. Therefore, each abstract can contain several topics with a substantial prominence), we calculated the topic-by-topic Spearman correlation coefficients in each of the time frames. From the received distribution of the correlation coefficients, we chose to focus on the top 25 per cent strongest correlations period. In order to highlight difference in strength of connections, we assigned different weights to the correlations between the topics. Coefficient values above the 75th percentile (0.438) but ≤0.5 were weighted 1; correlations above 0.5 but ≤0.6 were weighted 2; and correlations >0.6 were weighted 3. We visualised these topic networks using the software Gephi.

To compare networks of topics in each period, we used three common statistics of network analysis: 1 average degree of connections; 2 average weighted degree of connections; and 3 network density. The average degree of connections shows how many connections to other topics each topic in the network has on average. This measure can vary from 0 to N − 1, where N is the total number of topics in the network. Some correlations of topics are stronger and were assigned the Weight 2 or 3. These are included in the statistics of average weighted degree of connections, which shows us the variations in strength of existing connections between the topics. Network density is a proportion of existing links over the number of all potentially possible links between the topics. This measure varies from 0 = entirely disconnected topics to 1 = extremely dense network, where every topic is connected to every topic.

Table 2 shows that all network measures vary across the three periods. In Period 1, each topic had on average 21 links with other topics, while in Period 2, that number was much lower (11.5 links). In Period 3, the average degree of connections grew again, but not to the level of Period 1. The same trend is observed in the strength of these links—in Period 1, the correlations between the topics were stronger than in Period 3, while they were the weakest in Period 2. The density of the topic networks was highest in Period 1 (0.4), then in Period 2, the topic network became sparser before densifying again in Period 3 (but not to the extent of Period 1’s density).

Topic network statistics

These fluctuations on network statistics indicate that in the years 1988–97, topics within the analysed field of migration studies were mentioned in the same articles and book chapters more often, while at the turn of the 21st century, these topic co-occurrences became less frequent; publications therefore became more specialised and topics were more isolated from each other. In the past 10 years, migration studies once again became more connected, the dialogues between the topics emerged more frequently. These are important observations about topical development in the field of migration studies. The reasons behind these changes require further, possibly more qualitative explanation.

To get a more in-depth view of the content of these topic networks, we made an overview of the changes in the topic clusters across the three periods. As we can see in Fig. 10 , some changes emerge in terms of the prominence of various clusters. The two largest clusters (also by the number of topics within them) are migration-related diversity and migration processes. The cluster of migration-related diversity increased in its share of each period’s publications by around 20 per cent. This reflects our above remarks on the literature surrounding the integration debate, and the ‘cultural turn’ King mentions (2012). And the topic cluster migration processes also increased moderately its share.

Prominence and change in topic clusters 1988–2017.

Compared with the first period, the topic cluster of gender and family studies grew the fastest, with the largest growth observed in the turn of the century (relative to its original size). This suggests a growing awareness of gender and family-related aspects of migration although as a percentage of the total corpus it remains one the smallest clusters. Therefore, Massey et al.’s (1998) argument that households and gender represented a quantitatively significant pillar of migration research could be considered an overestimation. The cluster of health studies in migration research also grew significantly in the Period 2 although in Period 3, the percentage of publications in this cluster diminished. This suggests a rising awareness of health in relation to migration and diversity (see Sweileh et al., 2018 ) although this too remains one of the smallest clusters.

The cluster on Immigrant incorporation lost prominence the most over the past 30 years. This seems to resonate with the argument that ‘integrationism’ or the ‘integration paradigm’ was rather in the late 1990s (see Favell, 2003 ; Dahinden, 2016 ) and is losing its prominence. A somewhat slower but steady loss was also observed in the cluster of Geographies of migration and Migration research and statistics. This also suggests not only a decreasing emphasis on demographics within migration studies, but also a decreasing reflexivity in the development of the field and the focus on theory-building.

We will now go into more detail and show the most connected topics and top 10 most prominent topics in each period. Figures 11–13 show the network maps of topics in each period. The size of circles reflects the number and strength of links per each topic: the bigger the size, the more connected this topic is to the others; the biggest circles indicate the most connected topics. While the prominence of a topic is measured by the number of publications on that topic, it is important to note that the connectedness the topic has nothing necessarily to do with the amount of publications on that topic; in theory, a topic could appear in many articles without any reference to other topics (which would mean that it is prominent but isolated).

Topic network in 1988–97. Note: Numbers indicate topics' numerical ids, see Table 1 for topics' names.

Topic network in 1998–2007. Note: Numbers indicate topics' numerical ids, see Table 1 for topics' names.

Topic network in 2008–2017. Note: Numbers indicate topics' numerical ids, see Table 1 for topics' names.

Thus, in the section below, we describe the most connected and most prominent topics in migration research per period. The degree of connectedness is a useful indicator of the extent to which we can speak of a ‘field’ of migration research. If topics are well-connected, especially in a context of increased knowledge production and changes in prominence among topics, then this would suggest that a shared conceptual and theoretical language exists.

6.1 Period 1: 1988–97

The five central topics with the highest degree of connectedness (the weighted degree of connectedness of these topics was above 60) were ‘black studies’, ‘mobilities’, ‘ICT, media and migration’, ‘migration in/from Israel and Palestine’, and ‘intra-EU mobility’. These topics are related to geopolitical regions, ethnicity, and race. The high degree of connectedness of these topics shows that ‘they often occurred together with other topics in the analysed abstracts from this period’. This is expected because research on migration and diversity inevitably discusses its subject within a certain geographical, political, or ethnic scope. Geographies usually appear in abstracts as countries of migrants’ origin or destination. The prominence of ‘black studies’ reflects the dominance of American research on diversity, which was most pronounced in this period ( Fig. 11 ).

The high degree of connectedness of the topics on ICT and ‘media’ is indicative of wider societal trends in the 1990s. As with any new phenomenon, it clearly attracted the attention of researchers who wanted to understand its relationship with migration issues.

Among the top 10 topics with the most publications in this period (see Supplementary Data B) were those describing the characteristics of migration flows (first) and migration populations (third). It goes in line with the trends of the most connected topics described above. Interest in questions of migrants’ socio-economic position (fourth) in the receiving societies and discussion on ‘labour migration’ (ninth) were also prevalent. Jointly, these topics confirm that in the earlier years, migration was ‘studied often from the perspectives of economics and demographics’ ( van Dalen, 2018 ).

Topics, such as ‘education and language training’ (second), community development’ (sixth), and ‘intercultural communication’ (eighth), point at scholarly interest in the issues of social cohesion and socio-cultural integration of migrants. This lends strong support to Favell’s ‘integration paradigm’ argument about this period and suggests that the coproduction of knowledge between research and policy was indeed very strong ( Scholten, 2011 ). This is further supported by the prominence of the topic ‘governance of migration’ (seventh), reflecting the evolution of migration and integration policymaking in the late 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, exemplified by the development of the Schengen area and the EU more widely; governance of refugee flows from the Balkan region (also somewhat represented in the topic ‘southern-European migration’, which was the 10th most prominent); and governance of post-Soviet migration. Interestingly, this is the only period in which ‘migration histories’ is among the top 10 topics, despite the later establishment of a journal dedicated to the very discipline of history. Together these topics account for 42 per cent of all migration studies publications in that period of time.

6.2 Period 2: 1998–2007

In the second period, as the general degree of connectedness in the topic networks decreased, the following five topics maintained a large number of connections in comparison to others, as their average weighted degree of connections ranged between 36 and 57 ties. The five topics were ‘migration in/from Israel and Palestine’, ‘black studies’, ‘Asian migration’, ‘religious diversity’, and ‘migration, sexuality, and health’ ( Fig. 12 ).

Here we can observe the same geographical focus of the most connected topics, as well as the new trends in the migration research. ‘Asian migration’ became one of the most connected topics, meaning that migration from/to and within that region provoked more interest of migration scholars than in the previous decade. This development appears to be in relation to high-skill migration, in one sense, because of its strong connections with the topics ‘Asian expat migration’ and ‘ICT, media, and migration’; and, in another sense, in relation to the growing Muslim population in Europe thanks to its strong connection to ‘religious diversity’. The high connectedness of the topic ‘migration sexuality and health’ can be explained by the dramatic rise of the volume of publications within the clusters ‘gender and family’ studies and ‘health’ in this time-frame as shown in the charts on page 13, and already argued by Portes (1997) .

In this period, ‘identity narratives’ became the most prominent topic (see Supplementary Data B), which suggests increased scholarly attention on the subjective experiences of migrants. Meanwhile ‘migrant flows’ and ‘migrant demographics’ decreased in prominence from the top 3 to the sixth and eighth position, respectively. The issues of education and socio-economic position remained prominent. The emergence of topics ‘migration and diversity in (higher) education’ (fifth) and ‘cultural diversity’ (seventh) in the top 10 of this period seem to reflect a shift from integrationism to studies of diversity. The simultaneous rise of ‘migration theory’ (to fourth) possibly illustrates the debates on methodological nationalism which emerged in the early 2000s. The combination of theoretical maturity and the intensified growth in the number of migration journals at the turn of the century suggests that the field was becoming institutionalised.

Overall, the changes in the top 10 most prominent topics seem to show a shifting attention from ‘who’ and ‘what’ questions to ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions. Moreover, the top 10 topics now account only for 26 per cent of all migration studies (a 15 per cent decrease compared with the period before). This means that there were many more topics which were nearly as prominent as those in the top 10. Such change again supports our claim that in this period, there were more intensive ‘sub-field’ developments in migration studies than in the previous period.

6.3 Period 3: 2008–17

In the last decade, the most connected topics have continued to be: ‘migration in/from Israel and Palestine’, ‘Asian migration’, and ‘black studies’. The hypothetical reasons for their central position in the network of topics are the same as in the previous period. The new most-connected topics—‘Conflicts, violence, and migration’, together with the topic ‘Religious diversity’—might indicate to a certain extent the widespread interest in the ‘refugee crisis’ of recent years ( Fig. 13 ).

The publications on the top 10 most prominent topics constituted a third of all migration literature of this period analysed in our study. A closer look at them reveals the following trends (see Supplementary Data B for details). ‘Mobilities’ is the topic of the highest prominence in this period. Together with ‘diasporas and transnationalism’ (fourth), this reflects the rise of critical thinking on methodological nationalism ( Wimmer and Glick Schiller, 2002 ) and the continued prominence of transnationalism in the post-‘mobility turn’ era ( Urry (2007) , cited in King, 2012 ).

The interest in subjective experiences of migration and diversity has continued, as ‘identity narratives’ continues to be prominent, with the second highest proportion of publications, and as ‘Discrimination and socio-psychological issues’ have become the eighth most prominent topic. This also echoes an increasing interest in the intersection of (mental) health and migration (cf. Sweileh et al., 2018 ).

The prominence of the topics ‘human rights law and protection’ (10th) and ‘governance of migration and diversity’ (9th), together with ‘conflicts, violence, and migration’ being one of the most connected topics, could be seen as a reflection of the academic interest in forced migration and asylum. Finally, in this period, the topics ‘race and racism’ (fifth) and ‘black studies’ (seventh) made it into the top 10. Since ‘black studies’ is also one of the most connected topics, such developments may reflect the growing attention to structural and inter-personal racism not only in the USA, perhaps reflecting the #blacklivesmatter movement, as well as in Europe, where the idea of ‘white Europeanness’ has featured in much public discourse.

6.4 Some hypotheses for further research

Why does the connectedness of topics change across three periods? In an attempt to explain these changes, we took a closer look at the geographical distribution of publications in each period. One of the trends that may at least partially explain the loss of connectedness between the topics in Period 2 could be related to the growing internationalisation of English language academic literature linked to a sharp increase in migration-focussed publications during the 1990s.

Internationalisation can be observed in two ways. First, the geographies of English language journal publications have become more diverse over the years. In the period 1988–97, the authors’ institutional affiliations spanned 57 countries. This increased to 72 in 1998–2007, and then to 100 in 2007–18 (we counted only those countries which contained at least 2 publications in our dataset). Alongside this, even though developed Anglophone countries (the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK, Ireland, and New Zealand) account for the majority of publications of our overall dataset, the share of publications originating from non-Anglophone countries has increased over time. In 1988–97, the number of publications from non-Anglophone European (EU+EEA) countries was around 13 per cent. By 2008–17, this had significantly increased to 28 per cent. Additionally, in the rest of the world, we observe a slight proportional increase from 9.5 per cent in the first period to 10.6 per cent in the last decade. Developed Anglophone countries witness a 16 per cent decrease in their share of all articles on migration. The trends of internationalisation illustrated above, combined with the loss of connectedness at the turn of the 21st century, seem to indicate that English became the lingua-franca for academic research on migration in a rather organic manner.

It is possible that a new inflow of ideas came from the increased number of countries publishing on migration whose native language is not English. This rise in ‘competition’ might also have catalysed innovation in the schools that had longer established centres for migration studies. Evidence for this lies in the rise in prominence of the topic ‘migration theory’ during this period. It is also possible that the expansion of the European Union and its research framework programmes, as well as the Erasmus Programmes and Erasmus Mundus, have perhaps brought novel, comparative, perspectives in the field. All this together might have created fruitful soil for developing unique themes and approaches, since such approaches in theory lead to more success and, crucially, more funds for research institutions.

This, however, cannot fully explain why in Period 3 the field became more connected again, other than that the framework programmes—in particular framework programme 8, Horizon 2020—encourage the building of scientific bridges, so to speak. Our hypothesis is thus that after the burst of publications and ideas in Period 2, scholars began trying to connect these new themes and topics to each other through emergent international networks and projects. Perhaps even the creation and work of the IMISCOE (2004-) and NOMRA (1998-) networks contributed to this process of institutionalisation. This, however, requires much further thought and exploration, but for now, we know that the relationship between the growth, the diversification, and the connectedness in this emergent research field is less straightforward than we might previously have suggested. This begs for further investigation perhaps within a sociology of science framework.

This article offers an inductive mapping of the topical focus of migration studies over a period of more than 30 years of development of the research field. Based on the literature, we expected to observe increasing diversity of topics within the field and increasing fragmentation between the topics, also in relation to the rapid growth in volume and internationalisation of publications in migration studies. However, rather than growth and increased diversity leading to increased fragmentation, our analysis reveals a complex picture of a rapidly growing field where the diversity of topics has remained relatively stable. Also, even as the field has internationalised, it has retained its overall connectedness, albeit with a slight and temporary fragmentation at the turn of the century. In this sense, we can argue that migration studies have indeed come of age as a distinct research field.

In terms of the volume of the field of migration studies, our study reveals an exponential growth trajectory, especially since the mid-1990s. This involves both the number of outlets and the number of publications therein. There also seems to be a consistent path to internationalisation of the field, with scholars from an increasing number of countries publishing on migration, and a somewhat shrinking share of publications from Anglo-American countries. However, our analysis shows that this has not provoked an increased diversity of topics in the field. Instead, the data showed that there have been several important shifts in terms of which topics have been most prominent in migration studies. The field has moved from focusing on issues of demographics, statistics, and governance, to an increasing focus on mobilities, migration-related diversity, gender, and health. Also, interest in specific geographies of migration seems to have decreased.

These shifts partially resonated with the expectations derived from the literature. In the 1980s and 1990s, we observed the expected widespread interest in culture, seen in publications dealing primarily with ‘education and language training’, ‘community development’, and ‘intercultural communication’. This continued to be the case at the turn of the century, where ‘identity narratives’ and ‘cultural diversity’ became prominent. The expected focus on borders in the periods ( Pedraza-Bailey, 1990 ) was represented by the high proportion of research on the ‘governance of migration’, ‘migration flows’, and in the highly connected topic ‘intra-EU mobility’. Following Portes (1997) , we expected ‘transnational communities’, ‘states and state systems’, and the ‘new second generation’ to be key themes for the ‘new century’. Transnationalism shifts attention away from geographies of migration and nation–states, and indeed, our study shows that ‘geographies of migration’ gave way to ‘mobilities’, the most prominent topic in the last decade. This trend is supported by the focus on ‘diasporas and transnationalism’ and ‘identity narratives’ since the 2000s, including literature on migrants’ and their descendants’ dual identities. These developments indicate a paradigmatic shift in migration studies, possibly caused by criticism of methodological nationalism. Moreover, our data show that themes of families and gender have been discussed more in the 21st century, which is in line with Portes’ predictions.

The transition from geographies to mobilities and from the governance of migration to the governance of migration-related diversity, race and racism, discrimination, and social–psychological issues indicates a shifting attention in migration studies from questions of ‘who’ and ‘what’ towards ‘how’ and ‘why’. In other words, a more nuanced understanding of the complexity of migration processes and consequences emerges, with greater consideration of both the global and the individual levels of analysis.

However, this complexification has not led to thematic fragmentation in the long run. We did not find a linear trend towards more fragmentation, meaning that migration studies have continued to be a field. After an initial period of high connectedness of research mainly coming from America and the UK, there was a period with significantly fewer connections within migration studies (1998–2007), followed by a recovery of connectedness since then, while internationalisation has continued. What does this tell us?

We may hypothesise that the young age of the field and the tendency towards methodological nationalism may have contributed to more connectedness in the early days of migration studies. The accelerated growth and internationalisation of the field since the late 1990s may have come with an initial phase of slight fragmentation. The increased share of publications from outside the USA may have caused this, as according to Massey et al. (1998) , European migration research was then more conceptually dispersed than across the Atlantic. The recent recovery of connectedness could then be hypothesised as an indicator of the field’s institutionalisation, especially at the European level, and growing conceptual and theoretical development. As ‘wisdom comes with age’, this may be an indication of the ‘coming of age’ of migration studies as a field with a shared conceptual and theoretical foundation.

The authors would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback, as well as dr. J.F. Alvarado for his advice in the early stages of work on this article.

This research is associated with the CrossMigration project, funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the grant agreement Ares(2017) 5627812-770121.

Conflict of interest statement . None declared.

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Drivers of human migration: a review of scientific evidence.

1. Introduction

2. systematic literature reviews for evidence based policymaking, 3. evidence materials on migration drivers—methodology of selection.

• studies that concentrated on population-geographical segments too specific to be able to confidently claim wider, at least country-level, validity (e.g., migration incentives of Polish construction workers, Italian university graduates, farmworkers, physicians, and the like)
• studies analysing migration intentions, not the already pursued migration decisions, or studies analysing post-accession migration
• studies for which duplicates have been discovered, most often working papers that preceded a later-published journal article, by the same authors and on the same topic (where only the later publications were maintained).

4. Content Analysis of the Evidence Materials

6. conclusions, 6.1. limitations, 6.2. future research, supplementary materials, author contributions, data availability statement, acknowledgments, conflicts of interest.

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Pitoski, D.; Lampoltshammer, T.J.; Parycek, P. Drivers of Human Migration: A Review of Scientific Evidence. Soc. Sci. 2021 , 10 , 21. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10010021

Pitoski D, Lampoltshammer TJ, Parycek P. Drivers of Human Migration: A Review of Scientific Evidence. Social Sciences . 2021; 10(1):21. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10010021

Pitoski, Dino, Thomas J. Lampoltshammer, and Peter Parycek. 2021. "Drivers of Human Migration: A Review of Scientific Evidence" Social Sciences 10, no. 1: 21. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10010021

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New research indicates that birds are not alone while migrating—and sharing space with other species may even help them on the journey

Alexa Robles-Gil

Daily Correspondent

In the spring and fall, migratory birds make death-defying trips between distant sites, sometimes traveling from Canada all the way down to Mexico or South America. During their long treks, they may encounter bad weather and predators or contend with habitat loss and light pollution. Now, a new study suggests birds do not make these journeys alone—and they may actually be teaming up with other species during migration.

Scientists generally thought that birds of different species merely happened to fly near each other while migrating, without interacting much. But the research, published in  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in August, suggests this sharing of space isn’t by chance. Instead, the creatures form cross-species migrating communities that could prove to be beneficial to the birds.

“It seems like common sense: When all of these birds are concentrating in really high densities, they are likely interacting with each other,” says Joely DeSimone , the study’s lead author and a biologist at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, to Audubon magazine ’s Benjamin Hack.

Tracing the interactions between migrating animals can be difficult, but DeSimone and her co-authors approached the task by focusing on stopover sites—locations where birds rest and refuel during their migratory journeys. These sites also often serve as bird banding stations, where researchers capture birds in lightweight mist nets, study them and affix tiny numbered bands to their legs before releasing them back into the wild.

DeSimone and her team analyzed more than half a million records collected over 20 years to parse avian social networks. The data, collected from five different bird banding stations in northeastern North America, represented 50 songbird species.

“We found support for communities on the move—considering migrating birds as part of interacting communities rather than random gatherings of independently migrating species,” says study co-author  Emily Cohen , a biologist at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, in a statement . “This work could change the way we study and conserve animal migrations.”

In the study, the researchers focused on noting which species were present together and which species didn’t overlap at a stopover site. They ran an analysis to test whether various species appeared together more frequently than they would if their overlap was just random. But they didn’t record specific interactions between the birds.

“With our data set, we can’t say whether these relationships are positive or negative,” DeSimone tells National Geographic ’s Jason Bittel. “We could be seeing affiliations among birds that are chasing each other into the net, or we could be observing aggressive relationships.”

But surprisingly, the researchers found that songbirds tended to show up together rather than avoid each other. American redstarts and magnolia warblers reliably appeared together in the researchers’ nets in spring and fall. The same thing happened with ruby-crowned kinglets and white-throated sparrows. Out of all the species, only American redstarts and ruby-crowned kinglets seemingly avoided each other—a pattern seen at just one banding site—but the researchers don’t know why.

The species that overlapped tended to have similar foraging habits and non-breeding ranges. Scientists had expected to see more competition, especially where food was concerned. But the prevalence of these overlapping encounters hints at a more positive network between them. “The presence of other birds with similar foraging behavior or similar food preferences may signal to newcomers where the good habitat is,” helping them refuel more quickly, DeSimone tells National Geographic .

Future research could examine whether successful migrations depend on these networks, or whether key links between species are vulnerable to habitat or climate changes,  Steve Dudgeon , a program director at the National Science Foundation, which funded the study, says in the statement.

But for now, the paper is already pioneering a shift in understanding bird migrations.

“This really allows for a big picture view of what’s happening,” Janet Ng , a wildlife biologist at the department of Environment and Climate Change in Canada who was not involved in the study, says to National Geographic .

As humans build roads and cut down forests, migration becomes an increasingly difficult journey  for many animals. For birds specifically, research has shown that sometimes their migratory behavior is rooted in their genes, and this could make it harder for them to rapidly adapt to new environmental conditions. But by changing the lens used to understand these bird species, the paper could help conservationists home in on where to direct their efforts.

“For a long time, scientists have been working under the idea that a lot of these birds just sort of do their own thing during migration,” says Jill Deppe , the senior director of the National Audubon Society’s Migratory Bird Initiative who wasn’t involved in the study, to Audubon . “Because we weren’t sure about whether birds were moving together and had these interactions, a lot of our approach to conservation has been one species at a time.”

But the findings suggest researchers should be able to help declining populations and fast-track conservation actions by understanding migration as communal, she adds. “One species at a time just isn’t going to be fast enough to protect these species and bend that bird curve.”

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Alexa Robles-Gil is a bilingual science journalist based in New York City. Her work has appeared in the Guardian , Undark , Inside Climate News  and more.

Introduction to Migration Studies

An Interactive Guide to the Literatures on Migration and Diversity

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Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences; Room T17-16, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

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• Open access interactive textbook on migration studies
• Encourages students to search on key theories or concepts
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Part of the book series: IMISCOE Research Series (IMIS)

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About this book

This open access textbook provides an introduction to theories, concepts and methodological approaches concerning various facets of migration and migration-related diversities. It starts with an introduction to migration studies and continues with an introductory reading of migration drivers, migration infrastructures, migration flows, and several transversal topics such as gender and migration. It also covers politics, policies and governance as well as specific research methods.

As an interactive guide, this book develops an innovative format that brings a connection with various online sources. This means that whereas the chapters bring together literature in a coherent way, they are also connected to IMISCOE's online interactive Migration Research Hub for further reading and for more empirical material on migration and diversity.

As such, this textbook provides a very useful introductory reading for undergraduate and graduate students as well as for policymakers,policy advisors, and all those interested in studies on migration and migration-related diversities.

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Introduction: Contemporary Insights on Migration and Population Distribution

Changing Perspectives on Migration History and Research in Switzerland: An Introduction

Introduction: Interdisciplinary Dialogues and Methodological Debates

• Open access
• Origins and development of migration studies
• Migration from historical and global perspective
• Migration drivers
• Migration, economic disparities and labour market
• Migration, conflict and war
• Migration, environmental change and natural disasters
• Digital migration infrastructures
• Family and humanitarian migration
• Lifestyle migration
• Student mobilities
• Irregular migration
• Migration, ethnicity and race
• Migration and transnationalism
• Gender and migration
• Migration and development
• Migration policies, governance and politics
• Migration-related diversity
• Migration statistics

Table of contents (29 chapters)

Front matter, an introduction to migration studies: the rise and coming of age of a research field.

• Peter Scholten, Asya Pisarevskaya, Nathan Levy

Migration Histories

• Marlou Schrover

Conceptual Approaches: Migration Drivers, Infrastructures, and Forms

Migration drivers: why do people migrate.

• Mathias Czaika, Constantin Reinprecht

Migration Infrastructures: How Do People Migrate?

• Franck Düvell, Carlotta Preiss

Digital Migration Infrastructures

• Carlotta Preiss

Migration Forms: What Forms of Migration Can Be Distinguished?

• Cathrine Talleraas

Labour Migration

• Laura Oso, Paweł Kaczmarczyk, Justyna Salamońska

Family Migration

• Eleonore Kofman, Franz Buhr, Maria Lucinda Fonseca

Humanitarian Migration

• Cathrine Talleraas, Jan-Paul Brekke, Franz Buhr

Lifestyle Migration

• Jennifer McGarrigle

Student Mobilities

• Elisa Alves, Russell King

Irregular Migration

• Sarah Spencer, Anna Triandafyllidou

Conceptual Approaches: Migration Consequences

Migration and the nation.

• Anna Triandafyllidou

The Contested Concept of ‘Integration’

• Sarah Spencer

Transnationalism

• Ludger Pries

Cities of Migration

• Asya Pisarevskaya, Peter Scholten

Editors and Affiliations

Peter Scholten

About the editor

Peter Scholten is full professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam with a chair in the Governance of Migration and Diversity. Peter is academic coordinator of the IMISCOE Research Network, alliance coordinator of the European University of Post-Industrial Cities (UNIC) and director of the LDE Centre on the Governance of Migration and Diversity. His work focuses on science-politics relations, multi-level governance and urban governance of migration and diversity. He published in numerous international journals and recently published his monograph on Mainstreaming versus Alienation; a complexity perspective on the governance of migration and diversity. Peter is also founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Comparative Migration Studies and associated editor of the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title : Introduction to Migration Studies

Book Subtitle : An Interactive Guide to the Literatures on Migration and Diversity

Editors : Peter Scholten

Series Title : IMISCOE Research Series

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92377-8

Publisher : Springer Cham

eBook Packages : Social Sciences , Social Sciences (R0)

Copyright Information : The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2022

Hardcover ISBN : 978-3-030-92376-1 Published: 04 June 2022

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-030-92379-2 Published: 05 June 2023

eBook ISBN : 978-3-030-92377-8 Published: 03 June 2022

Series ISSN : 2364-4087

Series E-ISSN : 2364-4095

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : IX, 500

Number of Illustrations : 1 b/w illustrations

Topics : Migration

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September 10, 2024

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Research debunks myths about migration and return

by Free University of Brussels

Since the 1990s, the European Union has worked intensively with non-EU countries to discourage irregular migration and promote the return of irregular migrants. Despite years of efforts, recent research shows that migrant deterrent campaigns have little effect, and that deportations of irregular migrants are not as easy to drive up as politicians may suggest.

Free University of Brussels (VUB) researcher Omar Cham has examined the reactions of Gambian actors to EU migration policies and revealed the inefficiencies of these policies. The Gambia, a priority partner for the EU, is often the target of migration deterrent communications and pressure to cooperate in deportations of irregular migrants. Cham investigated the reactions of both politicians and ordinary citizens in the Gambia.

The work is published in the journal International Migration .

"From my survey, it is clear that cooperation in deportations is very unpopular in non-European countries. Indeed, many families depend on financial transfers and have often tied their hopes and financial investments to migration," says Cham. "Policymakers in the EU and its member states often promise to deport more undocumented migrants, but in doing so they ignore the sovereignty of non-EU countries."

Deportation cannot take place without the cooperation of sovereign non-EU countries, which must grant landing rights and identify their citizens. Return rates have been around 30% for years, so promising to significantly increase these numbers is unrealistic.

"It is also notable that the EU's deterrent campaigns, which focus on informing potential migrants about, among other things, the dangers of the migration route, are not having the desired effect," says Cham. "Gambians recognize the dangers of the migration route, but this information barely influences their decisions. Factors such as the benefits of migration, desire for a better quality of life and family pressure play a bigger role."

The findings contribute to a better understanding of the complexity of decisions about migration, the very limited influence of deterrent campaigns and the unjustified assumption that non-EU countries will willingly cooperate with a deportation policy of the EU or its member states.

"This research highlights that the EU as well as policymakers in member states such as Belgium should rethink their approach and it would be better to focus on the causes of migration rather than just deterrence and deportation ," says Cham.

Provided by Free University of Brussels

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America’s Great Climate Migration Has Begun. Here’s What You Need to Know.

Columbia researchers are developing innovative ways to protect communities most vulnerable to floods and other disasters.

For people whose lives have been turned upside down by climate change, who have survived wildfires and droughts, lived through hurricanes, and experienced unrelenting heat or unprecedented floods, it is a last-ditch survival strategy: you pull up stakes and move. 

Around the world, people are now routinely fleeing their homes to escape the effects of global warming. In the African Sahel, a semi-arid region that sits south of the Sahara, altered rainfall patterns are causing farmers to throw down their tools and seek refuge in cities. In Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, prolonged droughts are killing crops and prompting impoverished families to set out in search of more fertile ground. In Southeast Asia, the rising sea is inundating rice paddies, forcing farmers to quit their livelihoods and retreat inland. 

There’s no doubt that the climate crisis disproportionately affects poor countries. Populations that depend on farming or fishing are extraordinarily vulnerable to nature’s whims. Indeed, one report by the World Bank, coauthored by Columbia geographer Alex de Sherbinin , predicts that more than two hundred million people in low-income countries may migrate as a result of climate change by 2050.

But could Americans experience similar upheavals? Could we, despite our relative wealth and long history of bending nature to our will, one day find that large sections of our country have become uninhabitable? 

“We’ll likely see population shifts in the US in the coming decades because of climate change,” says de Sherbinin, who directs the Columbia Climate School’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) and teaches a course on climate migration. “Not everybody is necessarily going to go far. But we could see significant movements, probably away from the coasts and toward the north.”

According to de Sherbinin, some studies have indicated that tens of millions of Americans could be uprooted by global warming this century. However, there is great uncertainty about how many people may move and when, in part because individual decisions about whether to migrate are highly complex, involving not just environmental factors but economic, cultural, and social ones. “In other countries, we’ve observed that climate change is rarely the sole reason people decide to relocate,” says de Sherbinin, who has led several landmark studies on global migration patterns. “If people still have their livelihoods and there’s infrastructure to keep them reasonably safe, they’ll often stay and try to adapt, even in the face of pretty extreme environmental pressures.” So the amount of migration that we should expect to see in the US, he explains, will be strongly influenced by the public investments we make in supporting and protecting people in the least hospitable places. “The big question then becomes: how many resources do we put into adaptation efforts, and for whom?”

One thing that climate scientists know for sure is that America’s natural environment will be utterly transformed by mid-century, with profound implications for people’s health, safety, and quality of life. This will be true even under optimistic climate scenarios, such as if the world’s largest economies accelerate their transition to renewable-energy systems and hold average global temperatures to five or six degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels. Scientists now know with a fair degree of certainty, for example, that sea levels will rise one to two feet along the Gulf Coast and Eastern Seaboard by 2050, putting millions of homes at risk for regular flooding. “We’ll probably figure out ways to protect large sections of New York City, Boston, and Miami, because they contain huge numbers of people and billions of dollars in infrastructure, but countless other coastal communities situated in between major cities are going to have a more difficult time adapting,” de Sherbinin says. “State and local governments don’t have the resources to build seawalls around every seaside town. So all along the coasts you’re going to see homeowners and businesses trying to relocate. And where residents are too poor to move, we may see stranded assets as insurers pull out.”

Also by mid-century, climate scientists expect that large sections of the West will be turning into desert, that the Great Plains and the South will be stricken by heat waves and oscillating periods of drought and flooding that will make farming much less productive, and that parts of the South will be so hot and humid in the summertime that it will be dangerous to go outdoors. Climate models suggest that the heat index or “real feel” temperature — which describes the combined effects of heat and humidity — could regularly exceed 130 degrees Fahrenheit in many southern states, a level that has rarely been observed anywhere and that is life-threatening even to strong, physically fit people at rest.

Solomon Hsiang ’11SIPA, an economist who studies the effects of rising temperatures on human behavior, has argued that such extreme conditions could soon cause large numbers of people to leave the South, the Midwest, and the West. “People will definitely move. The question is just whether we’ll see this happen in the next few decades, given the current rate of warming,” says Hsiang, who conducted groundbreaking research as a Columbia graduate student and is now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He points out that extreme heat has been shown to decrease economic productivity in agriculture, manufacturing, and many other industries, which may lead businesses to relocate from the hottest parts of the US, with workers likely to follow. “At first, we’ll probably see an outflow of people in their twenties and thirties, who tend to be the most mobile,” he says.

Global warming is already causing subtle demographic shifts in the US. Climate-driven natural disasters like wildfires, hurricanes, and floods — which have all grown more frequent, intense, and destructive this century — now force two to three million Americans from their homes annually, and Census Bureau surveys indicate that many displaced people are choosing to permanently relocate out of harm’s way. The US government is also actively encouraging people to clear out of vulnerable areas. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has in recent years ramped up its efforts to acquire properties that routinely flood, many of which are being restored to estuaries, marshes, and wetlands that act as natural buffers against future storms. Meanwhile, old industrial northern cities, from “Climate-Proof Duluth,” Minnesota, to Burlington, Vermont, are billing themselves as “climate havens” in an effort to lure newcomers and revitalize their economies.

“Northern states could see an influx of people, because their summers will still be fairly pleasant and their winters less severe,” says de Sherbinin. Particularly well-positioned geographically, he says, are states near the Great Lakes, since fresh groundwater will be an increasingly precious resource as the planet warms. De Sherbinin frequently gives lectures in New England and the Great Lakes region about the need for policymakers and urban planners to prepare for the arrival of climate migrants. “Cities and towns throughout these regions could benefit economically and culturally,” he says. “But they need to start planning to provide housing, education, health care, and other services for more people.”

The total number of Americans who might already be considered “climate migrants” is modest but growing. This past winter, Jeremy Porter , a sociologist who teaches at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and at CUNY, published one of the first empirical studies on the subject. In a paper in the journal Nature , he and colleagues revealed that approximately 3.2 million people in the US have moved in an effort to escape flooding over the past two decades. In that time, climate change has made flooding worse across the entire country, not just along the coasts. “Inland communities that rarely faced flooding in the past are now getting washed out by heavier rainfall,” says Porter, whose team used big-data techniques to confirm that flood risk was causing people to move out of their neighborhoods. “In response, people in just about every county are now fleeing low-lying areas.”

Those who are leaving flood zones aren’t necessarily going long distances. In fact, the majority of them are moving to higher ground in the same county, Porter found. But in a forthcoming paper, he and his colleagues reveal that homebuyers are starting to avoid entire states because of their vulnerability to wildfires, extreme heat, and windstorms. “Several of these states, like California, Texas, and Florida, are still experiencing population growth, but we found evidence that they’re now growing more slowly than they would be if not for these climate hazards,” says Porter. “Some people, it seems, are finally taking these risks into consideration when choosing where to live.”

Could we one day find that large sections of our country have become uninhabitable? 

You might wonder why it’s taken them so long to do so. Climate scientists have for years been warning Americans that they are endangering themselves by settling in places like the parched, wildfire-prone woodlands of California and Nevada; the eroding coastlines of Florida and South Carolina; and the sweltering Southwestern states. Yet Americans have continued to flock to these places, causing their populations to grow dramatically in recent decades. They continue to do so today, notwithstanding the small deceleration in growth detected by Porter, despite the costs in deaths and dollars. In 2023, the US experienced a record-breaking twenty-eight climate and weather disasters that each caused $1 billion or more in damages; these events killed nearly five hundred people.

Environmental journalist Abrahm Lustgarten ’03JRN, in his new book, On the Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America , considers why so many Americans live in high-risk locations and what it might take for them to leave. The reason for our current population distribution, he asserts, is largely economic, since US elected leaders, with the backing of financial institutions, have long encouraged the construction of homes just about anywhere possible, including in the paths of wildfires, hurricanes, droughts, and floods. For a long time, this aggressive development strategy paid off, because natural disasters were relatively rare and the costs of repairing properties when catastrophes did occur were easily shouldered by insurance companies. But in recent years, disaster-recovery costs have skyrocketed, causing insurance companies in California, Florida, and several other states to start losing money. Property owners have so far been largely insulated from these losses, says Lustgarten, because state leaders, fearing that a mass exodus of residents would destabilize their real-estate markets and shrink their tax base, have — through regulation and subsidy — prevented insurance companies from significantly raising their rates. But sooner or later, Lustgarten argues, homeowners in vulnerable areas will have to shoulder the true cost of their coverage, which will cause property values to plummet. In the meantime, he says, subsidy programs are giving homeowners a false sense of security, making them unaware of the full extent of their financial exposure.

“The cost of insurance is an indispensable signal,” Lustgarten writes. “It’s not the only tool that represents the risks of climate change, but just as an auto-collision policy is more expensive for a teenage boy than for an adult driver, a high cost for homeowners’ coverage offers a clear, market-based sign of danger … Subsidizing insurance distorts that warning signal. It minimizes the perception of the real risk that people face.”

There are signs that the costs of climate hazards are pushing the US insurance industry to a breaking point. New York Times reporter Christopher Flavelle ’09SIPA revealed in an investigative series this year that insurance companies are now routinely losing money on homeowners’ policies in at least eighteen states — primarily because of wildfires, floods, and intensifying windstorms — and that in response many companies are refusing to sell or renew policies in certain at-risk areas, leaving homeowners scrambling to find coverage. Some state regulators, in a desperate attempt to persuade the companies to continue to provide coverage, have permitted them to raise rates, which have jumped 50 percent or more in some areas, with further increases expected. Flavelle called the development “a flashing red light” for the US economy. Without affordable insurance, “banks won’t issue a mortgage; without a mortgage, most people can’t buy a home,” he writes. “With fewer buyers, real-estate values are likely to decline.”

Lustgarten, in On the Move , predicts that the first big, conspicuous waves of climate migration in the US will begin when the bottom falls out of housing markets in the most vulnerable regions. If these markets do crash, he writes, they are likely to crash quickly, without much warning. And then, he writes, “a Darwinian game of financial survival” will ensue. Homeowners with enough cash liquidity to purchase new homes elsewhere will do so, and everyone else will be left with stranded assets, living in hollowed-out communities with less money for schools, police, and other basic services — let alone for floodwalls, wildfire barriers, and other adaptation measures that will be urgently needed. 

“If that sounds unreasonably apocalyptic, it’s almost exactly what leaders in Louisiana are right now warning about,” Lustgarten writes. He notes that many parishes along the Gulf Coast have seen a flight of middle-class and wealthy residents in recent years; those left behind have watched their neighborhoods devolve into blight. “Many of the people who have remained in coastal Louisiana as others have left have no means to help their communities raise more money,” he writes. “They themselves are desperately poor, their homes having lost so much value … They would leave, too, if not for their inability to sell and get out.”

Columbia faculty and students are leading dozens of projects aimed at helping people whose homes have become unlivable because of climate change, both in the US and around the world. Some Columbia teams are supporting people whose entire communities may need to be relocated, such as residents of small island nations vanishing beneath rising seas and members of Native American tribes situated along sinking US coastlines. Others are helping groups of homeowners in the paths of wildfires and hurricanes develop strategies to protect their neighborhoods. Still others are creating new analytic tools that enable policymakers to make more equitable and effective decisions about how to serve constituents in threatened areas. 

“In all of this work, our goal is to ensure that the people who are the most vulnerable to climate hazards are prioritized for assistance and have a voice in shaping the solutions,” says de Sherbinin, who chairs an interdisciplinary network of Columbia researchers who study issues related to climate migration and co-chairs a biennial conference on the topic. “If your neighborhood is constantly flooding and local officials are weighing whether to build a levee around it or encourage people to relocate, that’s a decision that you should have a say in.”

Many of the Columbia faculty and students working on these issues say they are motivated by a desire to advance environmental justice. It is well known that socioeconomically disadvantaged people are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In the US, this is true especially of Black, Hispanic, and Native American people, who, because of a history of racist housing policies, are more likely to live in poorly landscaped urban neighborhoods, flood-prone coastal plains, and areas without adequate groundwater. Experts worry that people in such communities will also be shortchanged in future infrastructure projects that aim to protect people against heat waves, floods, and other climate threats.

“People who are wealthy, highly educated, and politically well-connected have traditionally been more successful in securing public investments to protect their neighborhoods against natural disasters, even if other neighborhoods face greater risks,” says Paul Gallay ’83SIPA, ’84LAW, an environmental-policy researcher and director of Columbia’s Resilient Coastal Communities Project . 

Gallay’s job is to break this cycle in the New York City region, specifically with regard to flood mitigation. The Resilient Coastal Communities Project, a partnership between the Columbia Climate School’s Center for Sustainable Urban Development and the nonprofit New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, was launched in 2021 to promote equitable solutions to flood risks. It does so by conducting research on past flood-prevention projects and determining how such efforts can be made fairer and more effective in the future. Most importantly, it serves as a public watchdog over the US Army Corps of Engineers’ massive effort to design and erect a new system of flood barriers in the New York metro area. The $50 billion project, which is the largest of its kind ever attempted in the US, has been in the planning stages for years. The Corps has twice publicly unveiled proposals; its most recent plan, released in 2022, called for fifty miles of floodwalls, levees, and berms to protect New York City — or at least the most economically vital parts of it. The Corps, using a conventional cost-benefit methodology that prioritized the city’s most valuable real estate, recommended leaving many low-income neighborhoods unprotected. The plan, which also called for unsightly, twelve-to-twenty-foot-high walls that would surround much of the city’s waterfront, blocking street-level views of New York Harbor and the Hudson and East Rivers, was widely maligned. In response, Gallay helped to lead a coalition of community groups that, in partnership with state and city leaders, successfully petitioned the Corps to go back to the drawing board. Now the Corps is preparing to work up a third draft of its epic plan, giving equal weight to economic, social, and environmental considerations. To help keep the agency on track, Gallay and his colleagues at the Resilient Coastal Communities Project are helping to organize a new committee of environmental-justice advocates who will advise the government engineers on behalf of underserved communities throughout the region.

“One of the things we’ll be pressing for is protection against a broader spectrum of flood risks,” says Gallay, an attorney and a past president of the New York environmental organization Riverkeeper. He says that previous versions of the Corps’s plan focused exclusively on holding back coastal storm surges, but many New Yorkers also need protection against floods that regularly occur in their neighborhoods during heavy rainstorms or high tides. “We’ll also be calling on the engineers to expand the use of natural flood-protection measures like wetlands and reefs.” 

But inevitably, no matter how well it is managed, the Corps’s ambitious project will be unable to protect every New York City block. The total area of the city that is vulnerable to flooding is expected to expand significantly by the year 2100, affecting some 2.2 million residents, and there is simply not enough money available to build seawalls around every neighborhood and to elevate every street and sidewalk that needs it. Consequently, the specter of mass relocations hangs over the planning process; other cities that have undertaken massive flood-protection projects, including New Orleans, have orchestrated the “managed retreat” of residents out of low-lying areas that were deemed impossible to protect. These relocations have generally been induced via voluntary property-buyout programs, although during the Trump administration, cities that received federal funds for buyouts were told they had to back up the offers by threatening the use of eminent domain. Gallay says that few New Yorkers he has spoken to in vulnerable neighborhoods have expressed any interest in leaving their homes. “They’re more interested in finding creative ways to keep their neighborhoods safe,” he says. “They don’t want to talk about managed retreat. They want to talk about strategies to stay.”

Nevertheless, Gallay recently developed a set of guidelines for municipalities to follow should they choose to encourage residents to move out of high-risk areas. The bottom line: people whose future is at stake should be front and center at every stage of the planning process. “Nobody should be told, ‘Pick up and move.’ It’s not moral, ethical, or practical,” he says. “And ensuring that people have affordable housing available to go to if they do agree to move is paramount.” 

Gallay is concerned for renters, too. He notes that while public conversation about climate migration tends to focus on homeowners, rates of property ownership are quite low in cities, particularly in historically redlined districts where mortgage-lending practices once prevented Black and brown people from buying homes, accumulating wealth, and passing it down to their children. Yet kinship and social ties are extremely tight in many of these same neighborhoods, which can make the shuttering of apartment buildings terribly disruptive. “So a well-designed buyout program should ensure that if the owner of an apartment building is offered a buyout, protocols are in place so that tenants have their voices heard and their interests taken into consideration,” Gallay says. “They deserve a seat at the table.”

Several Columbia researchers have stepped out of their professional comfort zones to study climate migration. Marco Tedesco , a prominent glaciologist known for his groundbreaking work on the physical dynamics of melting ice sheets, remembers the exact moment he decided to broaden the scope of his research and investigate how rising sea levels and other climate hazards are affecting US population dynamics. While driving to work one morning in the spring of 2021, he heard an NPR segment about “climate gentrification,” which is said to occur when wealthy people move out of at-risk areas and into nearby neighborhoods that were previously considered less desirable, driving up rents and pricing out poorer longtime residents. “There was anecdotal evidence that this was starting to happen but no hard data to prove it,” Tedesco says. “I thought to myself: I’ve spent decades studying the long-term impacts of ice melt and rising seas, but there are people being harmed right now. I have to help them somehow.”

Over the next few months, Tedesco developed a novel analytic tool that enables researchers to identify neighborhoods that are especially vulnerable to climate gentrification and other forms of climate displacement. The Socio-Economic, Physical, Housing, Eviction, and Risk (SEPHER) dataset, as it is called, brings together huge amounts of information about climate hazards, real-estate trends, eviction rates, and residents’ demographics and housing situations in every US census tract. Tedesco made SEPHER freely available online in late 2021 and soon after published a case study, based on his own analysis of data from Miami showing that climate gentrification is real: as flood risks have increased on the Miami waterfront, rent prices and evictions have surged in low-income districts perched on higher ground a few blocks inland. “Traditionally, these were places where people who couldn’t afford to live along the coast had settled,” Tedesco says. “But as floods have worsened everywhere else, they’ve come to be seen as prime real estate.” 

Tedesco has worked with community leaders in Miami, New York City, and several other cities to explore how they could use SEPHER to advocate for policies that would protect people against displacement. He’s even created a special version of the tool for New York, which he hopes city officials will use to identify neighborhoods where affordable-housing investments and other initiatives are needed to stabilize at-risk residential communities. “There also has to be close monitoring of evictions, to make sure renters aren’t getting kicked out of their homes improperly,” he says.

Not all owners of waterfront properties are affluent would-be gentrifiers, though. In fact, in many US coastal towns and cities, working-class districts occupy long stretches of shoreline. Malgosia Madajewicz , an economist at the Columbia Climate School’s Center for Climate Systems Research, is determined to make sure that people in these neighborhoods are informed about climate risks. An expert on how people perceive information about climate change and incorporate it into their decision-making, Madajewicz has spent much of her career helping farmers in low-income countries tailor their agricultural strategies to new climate conditions. But after watching Hurricane Sandy devastate coastal communities in New York and New Jersey in 2012 — and seeing many affected homeowners stubbornly rebuild despite climatologists’ warnings of worse catastrophes to come — she began conducting research stateside as well. She wondered: how exactly do US coastal residents perceive their own climate risks? Do they have access to the information they need to make good long-term decisions? If not, what’s the best way to get it to them?

Madajewicz has been conducting studies in oceanfront communities along the Atlantic Coast, from Long Island to Virginia, ever since. Among her insights: most coastal residents badly underestimate the property damage they will experience as a result of rising sea levels. “Ten or fifteen years from now, the pace of sea rise is going to accelerate, which isn’t widely understood,” she says. By mid-century, she explains, many homes that have rarely if ever flooded in the past are going to be inundated regularly, possibly every year. “It won’t take huge storms like Sandy to do it. Much smaller storms will be enough.”

Few coastal residents appreciate the risks they face, Madajewicz says, because detailed information on the topic is not readily available. Government-issued flood maps show how high floodwaters have risen in the past but not how climate change will turbocharge future disasters. And public-outreach campaigns aimed at educating homeowners about climate threats rarely include the type of practical information that is likely to alter people’s behaviors, like estimates of the long-term financial cost of living in a hazard zone, she says.

To fill the gaps, Madajewicz and several Columbia colleagues are developing new types of outreach materials with clear, practical, and science-based guidance for homeowners in flood plains. To make sure the materials resonate, the researchers are creating them in partnership with representatives of those communities. “We’re focused on helping coastal communities with large numbers of low-income and middle-income homeowners, because they often have the least access to scientific information,” Madajewicz says.

An ongoing project that her team is leading on the socioeconomically diverse Rockaway Peninsula, along the southern edge of Queens, illustrates the power of their approach. Homeowners in the area, who are among the most vulnerable in New York City to storm surges and flooding, have long viewed their exposure to the elements with a mixture of angst and resignation. They’re accustomed to floods coming every few years and with them tens of thousands of dollars in repair costs, even with flood insurance, and they know that this is expected to happen more frequently in the future. But they have only a sketchy idea of how rising sea levels will change their lives and how to prepare. They don’t want to leave the neighborhood, where many of them have deep family roots, and few can afford to elevate their homes’ foundations for $150,000 or more. So they do nothing. They wait and see. “This is a problem, because there’s a big gap between their perceptions of the risks they face and the risks themselves,” Madajewicz says. “There’s a real lack of urgency.”

The Columbia researchers recently informed Rockaway residents about their financial vulnerability for the first time. Such information didn’t exist before; Madajewicz and her colleagues created it by combining past flood-recovery data from the neighborhood with the latest climate and flood models. They determined that over the next thirty years a typical Rockaway family living in a low-lying two-story house that is worth about $500,000 can expect to be flooded out of their home twelve to fifteen times and incur nearly $2 million in damage. “People’s jaws just dropped. They couldn’t believe that was even possible,” says Madajewicz, whose team distributed the information online. The researchers also detailed a wide range of flood-proofing options appropriate for homes on the Rockaway Peninsula, including a lesser-known method of filling one’s basement with sand and moving equipment like boilers, hot-water heaters, and circuit boxes upstairs. “That’s cheaper than elevating the house and dramatically reduces the recovery costs,” says Madajewicz. 

One thing that climate scientists know for sure is that America’s natural environment will be utterly transformed by mid-century.

And the researchers nudged residents to take a hard look at their future on the peninsula. Before investing large sums of money in flood-proofing one’s home, they write in the guidebook, residents ought to ask themselves: do I foresee living in Rockaway decades from now? The Columbia researchers noted that the Corps’s eagerly anticipated flood-protection project may feature a storm-surge gate at the mouth of Jamaica Bay that will only be closed during major hurricanes, thus providing Rockaway residents little if any protection against the types of routine storms that pose the greatest threat to their finances over the long run. Of course, it is possible, the researchers write, that government agencies will ultimately fund the construction of additional flood barriers that will ensure Rockaway’s future as a thriving beach community. But it is also conceivable that no additional public investments will materialize and the peninsula will become a water-logged ghost town. “Your guess is as good as anyone’s at this point,” they write.

Since Madajewicz and her colleagues began distributing this information in Rockaway in late 2021, they say, study participants have been abuzz with speculation about the neighborhood’s future and how they should prepare. Some are considering filling in their basements, gutting their ground floors, or implementing other more affordable flood-proofing tricks. “Others are talking for the first time about possibly relocating,” says Madajewicz.

The Columbia researchers are now planning a follow-up study to see if their initiative is influencing people’s decisions. But they say that simply sparking conversations among residents is progress. In the past, people in Rockaway reported not thinking much about rising sea levels — ironically, because they regarded the problem as too big and overwhelming to wrap their heads around. “When we would ask people how they were preparing, they’d say, ‘There’s nothing we can do. The government will need to solve this,’” says Madajewicz. “They felt powerless.” Now, by contrast, “people are becoming more engaged and motivated to take responsibility for their futures.”

Madajewicz says that millions more Americans living on coastlines, in the path of wildfires, and in other threatened areas will soon need to find the same resolve. And she hopes that her research team, by developing communication strategies that could be adopted by other educators and activists for use in their own communities, will ultimately benefit people across the country. “People in the Rockaways are on the front lines of climate change in the US,” she says. “They’re confronting questions that many others will soon face, if they aren’t facing them already: Is my home safe? Will the government help me? Should I move? There are no easy answers. But if scientific information is made available to people in ways that resonate with the real-world decisions they’re making, they’ll be able to navigate the uncertainties. And everybody deserves to acquire the knowledge they need to protect themselves and their families.”

This article appears in the Fall 2024 print edition of Columbia Magazine with the title "In Search of Safer Ground." 

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Chemical Science

Fluorescence-plane polarization for the real-time monitoring of transferase migration in living cells.

Transferases are enzymes that exhibit multisite migration characteristics. Significantly, enzyme activity undergoes changes during this migration process, which inevitably impacts the physiological function of living organisms and can even lead to related malignant diseases. However, research in this field has been severely hindered by the lack of tools for the simultaneous and differential monitoring of site-specific transferase activity. Herein, we propose a novel strategy that integrates a fluorescence signal response with high sensitivity and an optical rotation signal response with superior spatial resolution. To validate the feasibility of this strategy, transferase γ-glutamyltransferase (GGT) was used as a model system to develop dual-mode chiral probes ACx-GGTB (AC17-GGTB and AC15-GGTB) using chiral amino acids as specific bifunctional recognition groups. The probes undergo structural changes under GGT, resulting in the release of bifunctional recognition groups (chiral amino acids) and simultaneously generates fluorescence signals and optical rotation signals. This dual-mode output exhibits high sensitivity and facilitates differentiation of sites. Furthermore, it enables simultaneous and differential detection of GGT activity at different sites during migration. We anticipate that probes developed based on this strategy will facilitate imaging-based monitoring of the activity for other transferases, thus providing an imaging platform suitable for the real-time tracking of transferase activity changes during migration.

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Y. Wang, H. Niu, K. Wang, L. Yang, G. Wang, T. D. James, J. Fan and H. Zhang, Chem. Sci. , 2024, Accepted Manuscript , DOI: 10.1039/D4SC03387F

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