Migrant Network Analysis

Migrant network analysis studies the interpersonal ties — of kinship, friendship, and shared origin — that link prospective migrants to people who have already migrated, and treats these ties as a form of social capital that lowers the costs and risks of moving. Douglas Massey's 1990 article argued that once a few pioneers establish themselves at a destination, they reduce the difficulty of migration for everyone connected to them: relatives and friends can draw on their information, housing, job leads, and support, so each successful move makes the next one easier and more likely. This dynamic produces cumulative causation, a self-feeding process in which migration alters the social and economic context of the origin community in ways that promote still more migration, until flows acquire a momentum largely independent of the conditions that first set them off. Massey and colleagues' 1993 review codified network theory as one of the perpetuating mechanisms of international migration, distinct from the factors that initiate it. The analysis maps the network of ties, measures the prevalence of migration experience in a community, and models how that prevalence raises individual migration probabilities. It explains why migration streams, once begun, are so difficult to stop.