Footsteps in the sand: studying refugee paths since 2005 through a network analysis of 205 territories

Abstract

Refugee flows are studied in this paper using social network analysis. The level of these flows since 2005 was observed for 205 territories. In building a cartography of the flows, we observed not only the magnitude of the movements but also the rankings and categorizations of the countries. Countries such as Turkey, Syria, the United States and Germany were observed to be ‘bridges’, especially considering the movements of refugees from specific territories. Additionally, exploiting exponential random graph models, we studied a large range of attributes—economic, social and environmental—that are able to explain the edges found between countries. We observed that significant disparities in the observed indicators tend to create flows between countries and that the network for the most recent periods has become more unpredictable than that of previously observed flows of displaced people.