Influence of Social Networks on Human Migration

Dear Readers,

Being an immigrant, human migration has been a topic of interest to me. I believe that social networks play a significant role in human migration.

The positive influences of social networks on human migration are:

• Informal social networks help to spread information and instil a culture of mobility that penetrates individual decisions.
• Social networks provide information on migration and life abroad. So migration is directed towards places where social contacts are located – Information hypothesis, Ritchey (1976).
• Social networks provide support, e.g. by lending money or helping to find a job in the place of destination – Facilitating hypothesis, Ritchey (1976).
• Social networks reduce the short term costs of settlement while shaping other variables related to the migration process: decision to migrate, direction of the flows, transnational links, settlement patterns and incorporation.
• Social networks are crucial in the post migration process such as finding jobs and accommodation, circulating goods and services, as well as psychological support and continuous social and economic information.

• The costs and risks for new migrants are lower if they maintain social relations with relatives in a country of destination.
• Social networks promote migration as a result of family reunification and family formation (The spouses joining their migrant partners as well as the migrants seeking partners from their communities back home).
  
• Social networks also promote reverse migration to the origin countries and help in bringing back financial capital, knowledge, skills and ideas.

The negative influences of social networks on human migration are:

• If the density of the network of friends and the family in the origin society is high, then it is possible that these networks also reduce migration – Affinity Hypothesis, Ritchey (1976).
• The inter-dependency of some of the ethnic social networks is so high that even after the migration, the migrants tend to interact and live within those networks. This gives rise to isolation among communities in a society which in the extreme case leads to ghettoes.

The above influences can be found well illustrated in the links below:

While doing a Google search on the causes of human migration, I came across the following link:

http://www.migration-networks.org/Dokumente/Elrick%202005%20-%20SotA%20-%20Migration%20Decision%20Making%20and%20Social%20Networks.pdf

While doing a Google search on human migration examples, I came across the following links:

http://www.cies.iscte.pt/documents/CIES-WP12.pdf

http://www.nidi.knaw.nl/en/output/2004/jems-30-02-heering.pdf/jems-30-02-heering.pdf

http://www.chicagobooth.edu/research/workshops/orgs-markets/docs/FeiQin-ReturnMigration.pdf

http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/nerr/rr1997/spring/glsr97_2.htm

http://www.jstor.org/pss/621990

Based on my personal experience as well as experiences from my social network connections, I found many of the above influences being true.