Speaker
Description
This paper introduces a new dataset that estimates the volume of human travel
across country borders worldwide between 1995 and 2022. It builds and expands
on pioneering work that presented estimates for 2011 to 2016 (Recchi et al., 2019).
The dataset enables the study of the volume, directions, and changes in global
human mobility. Our estimates reveal that total transnational mobility increased
from 4.87 billion trips in 1995 to 9.64 billion in 2019, largely outpacing global
population growth. Across the board, international migration constitutes a tiny
fraction of transnational travel (less than 1% worldwide and as low as .15% in
Europe). The rise of transnational mobility has been particularly sustained in East
and South-East Asia. This region was, however, also the hardest hit by Covid-19
travel restrictions and their aftermath, which brought its flows in 2022 back to
mid-1990s levels. Most border crossings are intra-regional, especially in Europe.
Despite the widespread growth in volume, the global network of cross-border
mobility has not significantly changed its overall configuration around nine major
clusters in more than a quarter of a century. Germany stands out as the main hub
in Europe and globally, followed by the US and China. However, some regional
mobility clusters have split and others have merged, with individual countries
shifting between clusters. The dataset may be used to study global-level
phenomena in fields such as migration and tourism studies, sustainability,
epidemiology, international economics, and international relations.
| Keyword | Migration Economics |
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