Onward Migration Analysis
Also known as: Secondary Migration Analysis, Onward Movement Analysis, Re-migration Analysis, Transit-to-Third-Country Migration
Onward migration analysis studies what happens after a migrant's first move: rather than settling permanently or returning home, many migrants move again to a third country or region, a secondary or 'onward' move that conventional origin-to-destination analysis misses entirely. The analytical core is event-history modeling with competing risks. From the moment a migrant arrives at a first destination, several mutually exclusive futures compete — moving onward, returning to the origin, or remaining — and the method models the hazard of each as a function of time since arrival and of the migrant's characteristics and conditions. This framing draws on the step-wise migration tradition that David Conway clarified in 1980, in which migration unfolds as a sequence of moves rather than a single transition, and on the synthesis of migration theories by Massey and colleagues in 1993, which supplies the human-capital, network, and structural mechanisms that drive secondary movement. A central question is selectivity: onward movers are typically not a random subset of arrivals but are differentially selected on skills, legal status, and ties, so comparing the determinants of onward moves against those of return and staying reveals who keeps moving and why.
Key highlights
- Captures secondary and transit moves that conventional single-transition origin-destination analysis ignores entirely.
- Competing-risks framing correctly separates onward migration from return and staying as mutually exclusive outcomes.
- Links the timing of onward moves to theoretically grounded drivers (human capital, networks, status, conditions).
- Reveals the selectivity of onward movers by contrasting the determinants of onward moves with those of return.
Intuition
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How it works
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When to use it
Use onward migration analysis when migrants' first destination is plausibly not their last and you have longitudinal data recording time at that destination and the type of any subsequent move. It is the right tool for studying transit and stepwise international migration, secondary movement of refugees and labour migrants, and any setting where you want to distinguish who moves onward from who returns or stays and to characterize the selectivity of onward movers. Competing-risks event history is appropriate precisely because the outcomes are mutually exclusive and time-to-event matters. The method is less suitable when you observe only origin and final destination without the intermediate spell, when moves are too few to estimate cause-specific hazards reliably, or when the relevant question is the volume of a single transition rather than the competition among destinations. It also requires accurate dating of arrival and subsequent moves; coarse or retrospective data with heavy recall error weaken the hazard estimates.
Strengths & limitations
- Captures secondary and transit moves that conventional single-transition origin-destination analysis ignores entirely.
- Competing-risks framing correctly separates onward migration from return and staying as mutually exclusive outcomes.
- Links the timing of onward moves to theoretically grounded drivers (human capital, networks, status, conditions).
- Reveals the selectivity of onward movers by contrasting the determinants of onward moves with those of return.
- Demands longitudinal histories with accurate dating of arrival and subsequent moves, which are scarce and recall-prone.
- Onward movers are often a small, hard-to-track subgroup, leaving few events to estimate cause-specific hazards precisely.
- Competing-risks estimates can be sensitive to how 'staying' censoring and unobserved further moves are handled.
- Unobserved heterogeneity and selection into the first destination can confound the apparent selectivity of onward moves.
Common pitfalls
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Applications
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Frequently asked
How is onward migration different from return migration?
Return migration is a move back to the origin country or region, whereas onward migration is a move to a third place that is neither the origin nor the first destination. Both are secondary moves that end the spell at the first destination, which is exactly why they must be modeled as competing risks: a migrant who returns is no longer at risk of moving onward, and vice versa. Analysing them jointly, and contrasting their determinants, is what reveals whether onward movers and returners are different kinds of people.
Why use competing-risks survival analysis rather than a simple logistic model?
A logistic model of 'moved onward or not' ignores two things that matter: when the move happened and that other destinations (return, staying) compete for the same migrant. Competing-risks survival analysis handles the timing through cause-specific hazards and correctly treats return as removing a person from the onward risk set rather than as a non-event. This avoids biased conclusions that arise when return moves are lumped with stays, and it lets the timing of onward moves — early transit versus later relocation — be studied directly.
What does it mean that onward movers are 'selected'?
It means onward migrants are not a random sample of arrivals but differ systematically on characteristics such as education, skills, social ties, or legal status. Drawing on the mechanisms synthesized by Massey and colleagues, the analysis estimates how these characteristics raise or lower the onward hazard and compares them to their effect on return. If, say, higher skills increase onward moves but reduce returns, the onward stream is positively selected on skills, telling you who the first destination fails to retain and why secondary migration reshapes the composition of migrant populations.
Sources
- 1.Conway, D. (1980). Step-Wise Migration: Toward a Clarification of the Mechanism. International Migration Review, 14(1), 3-14.
- 2.Massey, D. S., Arango, J., Hugo, G., Kouaouci, A., Pellegrino, A., & Taylor, J. E. (1993). Theories of International Migration: A Review and Appraisal. Population and Development Review, 19(3), 431-466.
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Cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 23). Onward Migration Analysis. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/migration-studies/onward-migration-analysis