Openness to Migrate Internationally for a Job: Evidence from Linkedin Data

Daniela Perrotta , Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR)
Sarah Johnson, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR)
Tom Theile, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
André Grow, University of Leuven (KU Leuven)
Helga A. G. De Valk , Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI-KNAW), University of Groningen
Emilio Zagheni , Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR)

International migration is an important phenomenon with measurable demographic consequences. In this context, the study of migration aspirations plays a key role in understanding people's future professional trajectories around the world. While traditional data are collected via surveys, a lack of standardized data at the global scale makes it difficult to understand the choices, barriers and drivers of people's migration aspirations. In this work, we use data from the LinkedIn Recruiter platform to study job-related international migration. We continuously collected data since July 2020 on the number of users open to relocating to a new country for a job, for a total of 191 prospective countries and territories, resulting in a total of 114,630 data points. The main goal of this work is to identify the utility and limitations of this novel LinkedIn dataset for studying openness to international migration. For this, here we present descriptive results on inter-regional trends and we describe potential challenges and biases of using this dataset. Finally, we compare the relative attractiveness of certain countries by means of a gravity-type model, that controls for a set of geographic and linguistic factors that may generally affect openness to move from one country to another.

See extended abstract

 Presented in Session 35. Modelling Migration, Mobility and Positioning