Global Integration and World Migration

Oded Stark

Published: December 2016

This paper explores a theory of migration based upon a number of conjectures about the role of digital media. It proposes that a number of factors including rising use of the internet providing widespread access to global information and an intensified communication between regions and countries brought about, for example, by intensified trade links bring about expansion of people’s social space. This also expands the factors through which they compare their own living standards and social life with others. This expansion increases people’s stress and strengthens their inclination to resort to migration as a means of reducing this heightened stress. Other things held constant, the expansion of people’s social space intensifies their inclination to move across geographical space.