Max-Planck- uskontojen ja etnisen monimuotoisuuden tutkimuksen instituutti (MPI-MMG) tekee

poikkitieteellistä monimuotoisuuteen liittyvää tutkimusta. Instituutti on kehittänyt verkkosivuilleen

interaktiivisen työkalupakin, jonka avulla käyttäjä voi valita, tarkastella, visualisoida graafisesti ja
vertailla maakohtaisesti uusimpia ja kattavia tilastotietoja maailmanlaajuisesta muuttoliikkeestä
ajalta 1960 luvulta 2000-luvulle (2010 päivitetty).

Alla on lisätietoa Max-Planck-instituutista englanniksi ja sen verkkosivun linkki www.mmg.mpg.de

Innovation in visualizing global migration data: Online, interactive and dynamic

Steven Vertovec
Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity

Graphic representations of data can have many benefits. These include seeing relationships between
statistics more easily; spotting patterns, trends and anomalies more readily; and asking further, better
research questions as to why certain data appear as they do. Good data graphics also make for more
stimulating presentations of research findings, and they can significantly aid teaching by rendering
dense facts clearer and more visually interesting. For these reasons – particularly at a time when new
computer software packages are enabling tremendous advances in graphical representation – the field
of “data visualization” is enjoying a boom.

At the Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (MPI-MMG), we have
recently developed a set of interactive instruments to visualize the latest and most comprehensive
global migration data. After lengthy exercises in examining various sets of migration data, their
strengths and weaknesses (see Gamlen 2010), we have gathered statistics and developed new data
visualizers in cooperation with the United Nations Population Division (for migration flow data; see
United Nations 2009) and the World Bank (for migrant stock data; see Özden et al. 2011). [We have
accordingly used the accepted definitions: “migrant stocks” as “the total number of international
migrants present in a given country who have ever changed their country of usual residence” and
“migration flows” as “the number of international migrants arriving in a country or the number of
international migrants departing from a country over the course of a specific period” (Henning and
Hovey 2011: 981).] Further, we have been able to “reverse” the latter data set in order to produce a set
of graphics for migrants by destination: that is, the number of people from a particular country found, at
any particular time, in all other countries across the world. Where the national data allows, moreover,
one can choose to examine migrant data by citizenship or place of birth as well as by gender.

Previously, conventional ways of graphically representing migration data have been static, in
that they were printed maps. Also, these earlier depictions usually either relied on various shades of
color-coded countries to show the density of migrant inflows or on differently sized arrows sweeping
from one country to another to represent numbers of migrants. The MPI-MMG global migration data
graphics mark an important, innovative shift. For the first time, global migration data is represented
interactively and dynamically: that is, the online user can choose the type of migration data to be
examined, and the graphics change as one moves between country, data definition (migrant by
citizenship, place of birth, gender) and over time. Other advances include:

 In addition to graphic bars, actual statistics appear for each country selected by mouse click;
 Users can select country data by clicking from a list or on a map;
 Some 220 countries are simultaneously depicted, and color-arranged by continent: hence the
user can get views of individual country trends and numbers alongside global indicators;
 Conventional color-coded country graphics appear as well as bar chart graphics;
 Longitudinal data is animated, running through time from 1960 to 2000 automatically in a
sequence or through manipulation by the user;
 Each data visualizer has multiple ways of obtaining and representing data;
 The “threshold” or number of migrants appearing per country can be modified, so that the use
can burrow-down and graphically represent even small numbers of migrants;
 Up to four countries can be selected and compared side-by-side;
 Where the statistics are available, one can observe the continuous ebb-and-flow of immigrants
and emigrants to and from a number of countries;

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  Online users are able to print specific graphics that they compiled according to their own
interests.

To use these new graphic tools, please go to the MPI-MMG homepage (www.mmg.mpg.de).
From there, click on the heading “data visualization”. The subsequent website offers a variety of
options. In addition to viewing other kinds of data graphics produced from the Institute’s research, one
can launch any of the international migration flows, global migration by origins (migrant stocks) or
global migration by destination data visualizers. Each has a set of written instructions and an online
instruction video. A ‘feedback’ tab is also supplied for comments, questions and user examples. The FAQ
section will be continuously updated and the visualization tools upgraded accordingly.

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 This site also includes a demonstration video using the MPI-MMG data graphics to describe
some fundamental changes in global migration patterns (cf. Vertovec 2010). In order to illustrate some
implications of the graphic tool for research and theory, in this video I argue that with such
visualizations, we are better able to see how the pattern of global migration from the 1950s to the early
1970s could be characterized broadly as large numbers moving from particular places to particular
places – for instance, Turks to Germany, Algerians to France, Pakistanis to Britain, Mexicans to the USA.
Further, with the aid of visualized data, we can better recognize how this pattern began to shift around
the 1980s. Since then, the trend has been for new global flows to be comprised of comparatively small
numbers moving from many places to many places. There are many reasons for this shift, not least the
new and substantial refugee flows in many regions the world. Further, the trend has been exacerbated
as multiple means of border-crossing – indeed a massive migration industry – has developed over the
past thirty years. These changing means are themselves prompted by way of a variety of factors such as
cheaper transportation costs and innovations in communication technology (both providing for new and
intensified social networks that facilitate migration) as well as the ubiquity of neo-liberal economic
policies in many Western states (affecting the deregulation and flexibility of labour markets while
motivating employers to hire more low wage workers such as migrants). The MPI-MMG data graphics
clearly and compellingly show such trends, for instance, in: the numbers of people moving from and
between a great variety of African and Asian countries; the fact that Mediterranean countries of

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longstanding emigration (such as Italy, Greece and Spain) have fairly recently become countries of
substantial immigration; and the rise of East-West migration flows in Europe after the fall of the Berlin
Wall in 1989 and the accession of new members of the European Union in 2004. Looking graphically at
inflows to specific countries, one also notices the often profound diversification of migrant origins – a
key component of what I have elsewhere described as the rise of ‘super-diversity’ (Vertovec 2007).

We hope that the MPI-MMG data graphics and modes of data visualization can contribute
importantly to understanding migration through deepening analyses, sharpening research, supporting
teaching, and informing policy-makers and the general public. We invite you to the website to try, to
regularly use and to evaluate these new tools for yourselves.

REFERENCES

Gamlen, A.
2010 “International Migration Data and the Study of Super-Diversity.” Göttingen: Max-Planck-Institute
for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Working Papers WP 10-05

Henning, S. and B. Hovy

2011 “Data Sets on International Migration.” International Migration Review 45(4): 980-85

Özden, Ç., C.R. Parsons, M. Schiff, and T.L. Walmsley

2011 “Where on Earth is Everybody? The Evolution of Global Bilateral Migration 1960–2000.” The World
Bank Economic Review 25(1): 12–56

United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division

2009 “International Migration Flows to and from Selected Countries: The 2008 Revision.” United Nations
database, POP/DB/MIG/Flow/Rev.2008

Vertovec, S.
2007 “Super-diversity and its implications.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 29(6): 1024-54
2010 “General Introduction,” in Migration, Vol. I: Theories, (Steven Vertovec, Ed.), London: Routledge,
pp. 1-8