Date: 22nd January 2019, 4PM

Venue: HAS CSS RECENS, Meeting Room (T.1.40)

Address: H-1097 Budapest Tóth Kálmán street 4. T building 1st Floor Room 40.

 

Network effects in internal migration

Abstract: 

Our research focuses on the role of social networks in Hungarian migration. Previous studies have shown the impact of networks (family, hometown community, ethnic group) on migration. We examine separately the factors determining out-migration from source settlements and the factors determining location choices of internal migrants by analyzing migration volumes on the settlement-settlement level from the CSO internal migration database. The network effects appear in our model as additional push and pull factors for the individual beside the infrastructural and economic characteristics of the source settlements and destination alternatives. The characteristics of the settlements are included in the analysis based on the T-STAR database, and the distance between settlements are indicated by the travel time. The effect of social networks has been measured by the migration rate of previous years and by the intensity of user-user connections on iWiW social network site between two cities. We analyze longitudinal data for the 2000-2014 period, and cross-sectional models for the year 2014. Our results based on multilevel and fixed-effect regression models show that both leaving and choosing settlements are associated with the network effects: the migration of previous years, and also the connections on iWiW influence the current migration rate.

Keywords: internal migration, social network, cumulative causation, network effect, place utility, online social networks