International Migration Review
Summer 2014 Volume 48, Issue 2 Pages 283–574
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/imre.2014.48.issue-1/issuetoc

Original Article
The Globalization of Migration: Has the World Become More Migratory?
Mathias Czaika and Hein de Haas
Article first published online: 20 MAY 2014
DOI: 10.1111/imre.12095
Abstract
Although it is commonly believed that the volume, diversity, geographical scope, and overall complexity of international migration have increased as part of globalization processes, this idea has remained largely untested. This article analyzes shifts in global migration patterns between 1960 and 2000 using indices that simultaneously capture changes in the spread, distance, and intensity of migration. While the results challenge the idea that there has been a global increase in volume, diversity, and geographical scope of migration, main migratory shifts have been directional. Migration has globalized from a destination country perspective but hardly from an origin country perspective, with migrants from an increasingly diverse array of non-European-origin countries concentrating in a shrinking pool of prime destination countries. The global migration map has thus become more skewed. Rather than refuting the globalization of migration hypothesis, this seems to reflect the asymmetric nature of globalization processes in general.