Scholarly Migration within Mexico: Analyzing Migrational Movements among Researchers Using Longitudinal Bibliometric Data

Andrea Miranda Gonzalez, Department of Demography, University of California Berkeley
Samin Aref , Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Tom Theile, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Emilio Zagheni, Max Planck Institute for demographic Research

Migration of talent is a major driver of innovation. Researchers may use large-scale bibliometric data to measure international mobility of scholars and to evaluate the impact of policy interventions. Yet, our understanding of internal migration is quite limited. In this study, we analyze over 1.1 million authorship records from the Scopus database to trace internal movements of over 200,000 scholars in Mexico (1996-2016). Internal mobility is a rare event of a specific subset of active scholars. We document a core-periphery structure in the network of mobile scholars centered around Mexico City and a few states. Over the past two decades, the migration network has become more dense, but also more diverse, including greater exchange between states along the Gulf and the Pacific Coast. Preliminary results suggest that Mexican scholarly migration is experiencing a ‘mobility transition’ in which migration between urban centers is increasing, resulting in circular migration.

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 Presented in Session 61. Skills, Labour Market and Internal Migration