GCC Migration - A Longitudinal Migrant Network Approach

Although GCC migration is the third most important migration corridor in terms of total migrant stock, the topic has been underrepresented in the academic literature, which focuses mostly on migration to North America and Europe. The paper fills this knowledge gap in two directions. First, it uses an innovative dataset that estimates international migrant flow data instead of stock data. Migrant flow is more relevant as the changes in migrant stock can be the outcome of demographic factors such as migrant births, deaths and naturalization. Second, the paper applies network analysis, which has recently been applied to other migration corridors such as the US and Europe. Two key preliminary findings emerge from the paper. First, it shows that the GCC corridor stands out as the most important migration corridor over the period 2005 to 2010 in terms of flow, and a close second over the period 2010 to 2015. Second, when applying network analysis, the paper reveals that the GCC is even more central to the global migration network compared to its position with more standard econometric measures. Our ranking measure is less destination biased than most migration measures used in the literature. The GCC has emerged not only as a migration hub, but as a node strongly connected to other key international migration players. Future research using random graph methods, strategic game theoretic techniques, and hybrid, statistical models can provide a network perspective to the more common analysis of push and pull factors between individual countries.