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The Spatial Structure of Transnational Human Activity
Abstract
Recent studies have shown that the spatial structures of animal displacements
and local-scale human motion follow L\'{e}vy flights. Whether transnational
human activity (THA) also exhibits such a pattern has however not been
thoroughly examined as yet. To fill this gap, this article examines the
planet-scale spatial structure of THA (a) across eight types of mobility and
communication and (b) in its development over time. Combining data from various
sources, it is shown that the spatial structure of THA can indeed be
approximated by L\'{e}vy flights with heavy tails that obey power laws. Scaling
exponent and power-law fit differ by type of THA, being highest in
refuge-seeking and tourism and lowest in student exchange. Variance in the
availability of resources and opportunities for satisfying associated needs
appears to explain these differences. Over time, the L\'{e}vy-flight pattern
remains intact and remarkably stable, contradicting the popular idea that
socio-technological trends lead to a "death of distance." Longitudinal change
occurs only in some types of THA and predominantly at short distances,
indicating regional shifts rather than globalization.
... Transnational activities and cross-border mobility. Transnational activities refer to human activities that take place beyond nation-state borders and link people to different social, economic, and political cross-border networks (Deutschmann, 2016). Such activities include both physical crossing of national borders and cross-border communications that take place in digital space (Delhey et al., 2015;Deutschmann, 2016). ...
... Transnational activities refer to human activities that take place beyond nation-state borders and link people to different social, economic, and political cross-border networks (Deutschmann, 2016). Such activities include both physical crossing of national borders and cross-border communications that take place in digital space (Delhey et al., 2015;Deutschmann, 2016). Physical cross-border mobility could be related to living abroad and visiting family members and friends or to spending holidays back in one's country of origin (Waldinger, 2008;Delhey et al., 2015), working or studying abroad for a certain period of time (Delhey et al., 2015), having a second home or holiday home(s) abroad (Delhey et al., 2015;Hannonen et al., 2015), etc. ...
... The relationship between distance and the propensity to perform transnational activities is not linear. While Deutschmann (2016) states that most transnational activities occur over relatively short distances (people are more likely to form transnational ties with others in neighbouring countries or in the same geographical regions), case studies on certain ethno-linguistic groups and postcolonial settings identify strong transnational ties also over long distances (e.g. O'Connor, 2010). ...
In addition to permanent migration, different forms of cross-border mobility were on the rise before the COVID-19 pandemic, ranging from tourism to job-related commuting. In this paper ethno-linguistic differences in cross-border mobility using the activity space framework are considered. New segregation theories emphasise that segregation in one part of the activity space (e.g. in residential neighbourhood) affects the segregation in other parts of the activity space (e.g. in workplace), and that spatial mobility between activity locations is equally important in the production and reproduction of ethnic inequalities. Until now, segregation in activity spaces has been studied by focusing on daily activities inside one country. In reality, an increasing number of people pursue their activities across different countries, so that their activity spaces extend beyond state borders, which can have important implications for the functioning of ethno-linguistic communities and the transfer of inequalities from one country to another. This study takes advantage of mobility data based on mobile phone use, and the new avenues provided for the study of ethno-linguistic differences in temporary cross-border mobility. Such data allow the study of different cross-border visitor groups—tourists, commuters, transnationals, long-term stayers—by providing the means to measure the frequency of visits and time spent abroad, and to link together the travel of each person over several years. Results show that members of the ethno-linguistic minority population in Estonia make more trips than members of the ethno-linguistic majority, and they also have higher probability of being tourists and cross-border commuters than the majority population, paying frequent visits to their ancestral homelands. The connections between ethno-linguistic background and temporary cross-border mobility outlined in this study allows for future discussion on how (in)equalities can emerge in transnational activity space and what implications it has for segregation.
... border mobility has become widespread and affordable for increasingly large parts of society, with the worldwide number of cross-border journeys rising dramatically in recent decades (Deutschmann 2016;Recchi et al. 2019;Roser 2019). While cross-border mobility has now become a popular topic of social science research both globally (Reyes 2013;Sun et al. 2016) and in regions such as Europe (Kuhn 2015;Recchi 2015), we still know relatively little about the structure of travels in the Mediterranean. ...
... The geographic explanation is based on the idea that mobility is most likely to occur between nearby countries and decreases fast as distances increase. Past research has shown that this pattern holds for many different types of human cross-border mobility worldwide and that this factor explains the structure of mobility better than economic, political and cultural factors (Deutschmann 2016(Deutschmann , 2017. ...
... The data thus have their limitations, but we still deem the UNWTO one of the most comprehensive and reliable sources of human cross-border mobility that is available to date. Their data have also provided the base for previous research on global mobility patterns (Deutschmann 2016;Reyes 2013). ...
The Mediterranean is often portrayed as a hub of human mobility. In this article, we test this widespread view by exploring the structure of travel flows in the region over the last two decades (1995–2016). We find that mobility is much higher and increasing more strongly along the northern than along the southern shore, thus creating a growing mobility divide. South‐north and north‐south movements are even scarcer and stagnate or even decline over time. With a Gini coefficient of .87, mobility flows are distributed extremely unequally across country pairs in the Mediterranean. Community detection algorithms reconfirm that mobility predominantly takes place in disparate clusters around the Mediterranean, not across it. These findings imply that a ‘neo‐Braudelian’ view of the Mediterranean as a mobility hub is less justified than a ‘Rio Grande’ perspective that conceives of the Mediterranean as a mobility hollow. Multivariate regression models for network data suggest that geographical distance and, to a lesser extent, political visa regulations, explain the unequal mobility structure better than differences in economic well‐being.
... For the scope of this project the sympathy states were created only for countries who participated in the final of Eurovision song contest of year 2013. This selection was based upon the fact that Eurovision song contest voting system provides empirical data of sympathy between countries as a score, and that the initial sympathy state selection is based on transnational Facebook friendship data set of year 2012 [4]. The model covers a time period of four years, from 2013 to 2016, to make the results more robust. ...
... Subsequently, a subset was selected from the transnational Facebook friendship data set based on the twenty six countries chosen. The Facebook transnational data set contains information on the five countries to which people in the selected country are most connected to in terms of border-crossing Facebook Friendships [4]. Accordingly, sympathy states were created between 'sender' and 'receiver' countries where the obtained score in the Facebook matrix was at least 1. ...
... Accordingly, sympathy states were created between 'sender' and 'receiver' countries where the obtained score in the Facebook matrix was at least 1. This indicates that the receiver country is the country with which sender country has the fifth-highest number of Facebook friendships [4]. This resulted in 76 sympathy states, which contained the information of the sender and the receiver country. ...
Social network analysis commonly focuses on the relationships between two actors that could represent either individuals or populations. The present paper not only introduces a new concept of sympathy states to represent a sympathy between two actors, but also models how different sympathy states affect each other in an adaptive manner taking into account who expresses the sympathy and who receives it. The designed network model was designed with the Eurovision Song Contest in mind and takes into account external political events that affect the scores in this contest over the years. The properties of the model were analyzed using social network analysis. The model represents a first attempt in modeling sympathy states and their the adaptive dynamics modulated by external events by Network-Oriented Modeling based on adaptive temporal-causal networks.
... In fact, in contrast with the Gaussian cases, Lévy flights are characterized by frequent movement for short distances, interrupted by random changes of direction that are only occasionally followed by movements over longer distances. Sorting out the displacement lengths covered in these journeys by size frequency, results in a distribution with a long tail that obeys a power law [79]. This pattern, for instance, has been found in the displacement of animals [80,81], and humans in local [82], nation-wide [57] and global sphere [79]. ...
... Sorting out the displacement lengths covered in these journeys by size frequency, results in a distribution with a long tail that obeys a power law [79]. This pattern, for instance, has been found in the displacement of animals [80,81], and humans in local [82], nation-wide [57] and global sphere [79]. Thus, the model under consideration here is written as a generalized Edwards-Wilkinson equation: @ @t yðr; tÞ ¼ n r a yðr; tÞ þ Zðr; tÞ ; ð7Þ ...
Dengue infection plays a central role in our society, since it is the most prevalent vectorborne viral disease affecting humans. We statistically investigated patterns concerning the spatial spreading of dengue epidemics in Brazil, as well as their temporal evolution in all Brazilian municipalities for a period of 12 years. We showed that the distributions of cases in municipalities follow power laws persistent in time and that the infection scales linearly with the population of the municipalities. We also found that the average number of dengue cases does not have a clear dependence on the longitudinal position of municipalities. On the other hand, we found that the average distribution of cases varies with the latitudinal position of municipalities, displaying an almost constant growth from high latitudes until reaching the Tropic of Capricorn leveling to a plateau closer to the Equator. We also characterized the spatial correlation of the number of dengue cases between pairs of municipalities, where our results showed that the spatial correlation function decays with the increase of distance between municipalities, following a power-law with an exponential cut-off. This regime leads to a typical dengue traveling distance. Finally, we considered modeling this last behaviour within the framework of a Edwards-Wilkinson equation with a fractional derivative on space. © 2017 Antonio et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
... But is that because the Erasmus program offers unique opportunities, or because Europeans are simply richer on average than people in other parts of the world, and thus can afford to study abroad? An analysis of potential explanations for the existence of bottom-up regionalism shows that while cultural (common language, religion, colonial past, etc.) economic (gross domestic product, regional trade agreements, etc.) and political (shared membership in international organizations, visa waiver agreements, etc.) factors are all relevant to some extent, their role is minor compared with the powerful force of geography (Deutschmann 2015c). A closer look reveals that the relation between physical distance and almost all types of transnational mobility and communication follows a precise mathematical function, the power law, which is also found in the natural sciences for the motion tracks of animal species. ...
... Wir erwarten einen höheren Europäisierungsgrad der kleinen EU-Länder (Landesgröße). Auch im Zeitalter der "Raumschrumpfung" (Rosa 1999) ist Distanzüberwindung ein Kostenfaktor (Delhey et al. 2015;Deutschmann 2016;Mau und Mewes 2012); daher sind kleine Bewegungsradien wahrscheinlicher als große. Der Handlungshorizont kleinerer Länder sollte daher stärker nach Europa geöff-net sein (nationale Öffnung). ...
Zusammenfassung
Anknüpfend an das transaktionalistische Paradigma in der Tradition von Karl W. Deutsch und die Theorie des gestuften gesellschaftlichen Raums von Arndt Sorge wird in dem Beitrag der Frage nachgegangen, warum die Handlungs- und Einstellungshorizonte der Menschen in manchen EU-Staaten stärker europazentriert (und in diesem Sinne stärker „europäisiert“) sind als in anderen. Mit Umfragedaten aus mehreren Quellen wird durch partielle Korrelationsmodelle für die EU-27-Mitgliedstaaten gezeigt, dass sich die Determinanten der Europäisierung mit Blick auf den Handlungs- und Einstellungshorizont deutlich unterscheiden. Während bei den Handlungen vor allem die wohlhabenderen und kleineren Länder europazentriert sind, sind es bei den Einstellungen vor allem die postkommunistischen Staaten und jene, die geografisch im Zentrum der EU liegen und nicht protestantisch geprägt sind. Entgegen der transaktionalistischen Theorie haben Bevölkerungen mit einem europäischen Handlungshorizont keinen kongruenten Einstellungshorizont: „doing Europe“ und „feeling Europe“ fallen auseinander.
... We deliberately introduced cross-border contact as a mechanism, not a principle, since contact is itself to some extent influenced by proximity, homophily, and aspirational heterophily as basic organizing principles. For instance, cross-border activity is more common between nearby countries (Deutschmann 2016). As an umbrella term comprising the three principles and the contact mechanism, we will speak of 'logics.' ...
In times of multiple crises and a looming partial breakup of the European Union, the question of what binds Europeans together appears more relevant than ever. In this article, we propose transnational attachment as a novel indicator of sense of community in Europe, arguing that this hitherto neglected dimension is substantially and structurally different from alternative ones such as cross-border trust and identification. Combining Eurobarometer 73.3 data on ties between all EU-27 countries with further dyadic data, we show empirically that the European network of transnational attachment has an asymmetric core-periphery structure centered around five extremely popular countries (the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain). In line with transactionalist theory, cross-border mobility and communication are strongly related to transnational attachment. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the network of transnational attachment is much denser among those with a higher than among those with a lower level of education. Our results suggest that offering European citizens incentives to travel to peripheral countries may help counterbalance the current asymmetric structure of transnational attachment, thereby increasing Europe’s social cohesion.
... People have followed suit. Research in progress (Recchi 2017a; see also Deutschmann 2016) indicates that no continent is so tightly interconnected in terms of human mobility as Europe. The volume of cross-border travels within the EU has now soared almost uninterruptedly for over three decades (Figure 0.1), standing well above the levels for any other world region. ...
... national diffusion, as Tarde would expect. We use the aforementioned data on the prevalence of Facebook friendships between individual country pairs in 2012 (Deutschmann 2016). Note that this is but one channel of person-toperson influence, which could also occur through phone calls, personal travel, e-mail, and so on, none of which are measured here. ...
A large literature examines the global diffusion of institutions and policies, yet there is much less systematic research on how cultural tastes, consumption preferences, and other individual interests spread across the globe. With a data set that tracks the most popular Google search terms in 199 countries between 2004 and 2014, and drawing on Gabriel de Tarde, this article introduces a theoretical framework to examine how country-level differences shape global imitation of cultural interests and consumer tastes. Contrary to popular accounts, this study finds that cross-national diffusion is surprisingly rare—and seldom U.S. led—but occurs through a multichannel network with many different centers. Negative binomial regression models applied to cases of diffusion in 346,620 country-year dyads reveal that global imitation flows are likely patterned by the power and prestige of countries, their prox-imities to each other, and the cultural boundaries between them. Accounting for factors such as the influence of large organizations does not disrupt these findings.
... The vast majority of ties in Patterns II and III is thus interregional, which holds only for a minority of ties in Pattern I. This confirms our classification and fits the idea that most mass tourism occur over short distances [61,62], whereas individual tourism and the market for cheap labor migrants are globalized. Figure 11 shows the mobility ties between country pairs with the largest seasonal components, ordered by world region (denoted by different colors). ...
Human mobility across national borders is a key phenomenon of our time. At the global scale, however, we still know relatively little about the structure and nature of such transnational movements. This study uses a large dataset on monthly air passenger traffic between 239 countries worldwide from 2010 to 2018 to gain new insights into (a) mobility trends over time and (b) types of mobility. A time series decomposition is used to extract a trend and a seasonal component. The trend component permits—at a higher level of granularity than previous sources—to examine the development of mobility between countries and to test how it is affected by policy and infrastructural changes, economic developments, and violent conflict. The seasonal component allows, by measuring the lag between initial and return motion, to discern different types of mobility, from tourism to seasonal work migration. Moreover, the exact shape of seasonal mobility patterns is extracted, allowing to identify regular mobility peaks and nadirs throughout the year. The result is a unique classification of trends and types of mobility for a global set of country pairs. A range of implications and possible applications are discussed.
... Thus, whereas the network's size has increased by more than a quarter in just five years, its structure remains unchanged. This remarkable structural stability-which for individual mobility types such as migration has been shown to go back until 1960 (Deutschmann 2016)-has important sociological consequences. For example, it implies that the social bonds that are built through cross-border interaction (in line with intergroup contact theory) are primarily created between countries within the same world region. ...
Despite the sociological relevance of human mobility between nation-states, our knowledge about its planet-scale structure is still limited. Here, geographic mapping, algorithm-based community detection, network visualization, and conventional line plots are combined to display the network structure of 2.3 billion estimated trips between countries worldwide in 2016, together with information about the (non)evolution of this structure over time. The graph reveals that transnational mobility is highly regionalized: 80 percent of all human movements between countries occur within world regions. Despite strong increases in the absolute amount of transnational mobility, this share remains extremely stable between 2011 and 2016. The community detection algorithm reveals six mobility clusters that clearly correspond to world regions: Africa, Asia and Oceania, the Americas, Eurasia, Europe, and the Middle East. This stable, regionalized structure suggests that a fully globalized “world society” is unlikely to emerge, as social ties remain parochial, even in the transnational sphere.
... Tutto ciò, accompagnato da un sensibile decremento delle spese economiche e dei costi psicologici del viaggio, è foriero di nuovi incontri, di nuove esperienze, di nuove relazioni sociali (Hall 2005). Viaggiare diventa perciò una cifra caratteristica del mondo occidentale contemporaneo (Szerszynski, Urry 2006), come attesta l'incremento prodigioso della quantità di viaggi internazionali, quindici volte più numerosi nel 2010 di quanto non lo fossero nel 1960 (Koslowski 2011; Recchi 2015, 149;Deutschmann 2016). ...
In che modo e misura i cittadini europei fanno esperienza diretta di altre società europee? La dimensione transnazionale trova spazio nel loro vissuto? O la caratterizzazione locale e nazionale continua a dominare l'organizzazione della loro vita quotidiana? In questo articolo si esaminano tutte quelle attività individuali che proiettano oltre i confini del proprio Stato-nazione e si identificano configurazioni tipiche di pratiche di mobilità. In regime di libera circolazione, infatti, i cittadini europei possono muoversi senza restrizioni in Europa. È però vero che spesso del loro transito non restano molte tracce, così come le loro attività transnazionali risultano sostanzialmente invisibili per le statistiche nazionali, sia nel Paese d'origine, che in quello di destinazione, se non nel caso di vera e propria migrazione (per un quadro complessivo, Recchi 2013). L'articolo si avvale di una combinazione di dati quantitativi e qualitativi frutto di un lavoro di ricerca sul campo condotto in sei Paesi (Italia, Germania, Spagna, Danimarca, Regno Unito e Romania) per pervenire a una tipologia induttiva la cui descrizio-ne viene arricchita da interviste in profondità che esemplificano esperienze e significati associati a ciascuna configurazione. L'analisi prende le mosse dalla mappatura di una pluralità di forme di mobilità-immobilità che sono poste in relazione con variabili indi-viduali di carattere ascrittivo (sesso, età, nazionalità) e acquisitivo RASSEGNA ITALIANA DI SOCIOLOGIA / a. LVIII, n.
... We also urge scholars who wish to use the Global Visa Cost Dataset to run their own analyses to keep this limitation in mind. Tourism is also the most common form of mobility between countries, involving far more travellers than other types of movement (Deutschmann, 2016), arguably making it the most central form of visa cost to explore. ...
Visas are an important means for countries to regulate the potential access of non-nationals to their territory. Past datasets and quantitative research on visas have focused on visa waivers, ignoring the fact that visas, where demanded, can vary greatly by cost. This paper presents a novel dataset based on a manual collection of visa costs for travel between a global set of country pairs in seven different categories (tourist, work, student, family reunification, business, transit, and other). Our analyses reveal a strong global visa cost divide that exposes the injustice in the right to travel for people located in different areas of the world. Whereas Europeans usually hardly have to work at all for travel permits, visa costs often amount to several weeks of mean income in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The result is a fundamentally paradoxical situation: The richer a country, the less its citizens pay for visas to go abroad (both in absolute terms and relative to their income). Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood regression analyses reveal that a variety of factors influence the costs of visas between countries: reciprocal treatment, processing costs, historical-cultural ties, geographic proximity and regional, religious, economic, and political discrimination. This confirms the important role of visa costs as a tool for states to control population movements and simultaneously position themselves in international relations.
... In fact, most globalization indicators point to a continuing trend of increased transnational interconnectedness and cross-border flows (Gygli et al. 2019). Today, the world is not only spanned by a dense network of cross-border trade and communication technology but also by transnational human mobility (Deutschmann 2016). For instance, the number of tourist journeys tripled between 1990 and 2018, when 1.4 billion arrivals were recorded (Roser 2017). ...
The globalizing forces of trade, capital movement, the circulation of information, and human mobility have challenged conventional understandings of borders as entry gates that are under the firm control of nation states. Some scholars have even assumed that nation states would eventually lose control of their borders due to new challenges. However, borders have proved to be resilient institutions as states have adapted and reinvented border controls in several ways. First, states have responded to new challenges by hardening their territorial boundaries through border fortifications. Second, governments have shifted border control to third countries by using tools such as visa policies or readmission agreements. Third, nation states have designed “smart borders” through biometric passports, shared databases, and digital surveillance technologies. Lastly, de-facto borders show that clearly delimited boundaries can be attractive to countries, even in regions with limited statehood.
... This results in an initial link distance distribution consistent with typical empirical spatial networks describing human activities such as communication, friendship, or travel (47,48). Individuals are mostly connected to others in their local surroundings but can also maintain longer distance contacts to individuals in different localities across Ukraine (SI Appendix, Fig. S1). ...
Although spatial polarization of attitudes is extremely common around the world, we understand little about the mechanisms through which polarization on divisive issues rises and falls over time. We develop a theory that explains how political shocks can have different effects in different regions of a country depending upon local dynamics generated by the preexisting spatial distribution of attitudes and discussion networks. Where opinions were previously divided, attitudinal diversity is likely to persist after the shock. Meanwhile, where a clear precrisis majority exists on key issues, opinions should change in the direction of the predominant view. These dynamics result in greater local homogeneity in attitudes but at the same time exacerbate geographic polarization across regions and sometimes even within regions. We illustrate our theory by developing a modified version of the adaptive voter model, an adaptive network model of opinion dynamics, to study changes in attitudes toward the European Union (EU) in Ukraine in the context of the Euromaidan Revolution of 2013 to 2014. Using individual-level panel data from surveys fielded before and after the Euromaidan Revolution, we show that EU support increased in areas with high prior public support for EU integration but declined further where initial public attitudes were opposed to the EU, thereby increasing the spatial polarization of EU attitudes in Ukraine. Our tests suggest that the predictive power of both network and regression models increases significantly when we incorporate information about the geographic location of network participants, which highlights the importance of spatially rooted social networks.
This paper describes the deployment of a large-scale study designed to measure human interactions across a variety of communication channels, with high temporal resolution and spanning multiple years-the Copenhagen Networks Study. Specifically, we collect data on face-to-face interactions, telecommunication, social networks, location, and background information (personality, demographics, health, politics) for a densely connected population of 1 000 individuals, using state-of-the-art smartphones as social sensors. Here we provide an overview of the related work and describe the motivation and research agenda driving the study. Additionally, the paper details the data-types measured, and the technical infrastructure in terms of both backend and phone software, as well as an outline of the deployment procedures. We document the participant privacy procedures and their underlying principles. The paper is concluded with early results from data analysis, illustrating the importance of multi-channel high-resolution approach to data collection.
This article introduces the special issue on the contribution of comparative regionalism/regional integration studies to the rethinking of EU studies. It sets out what we consider to be a danger for EU studies, namely its tendency towards introversion, and argue for a sustained engagement with the studies of other global regions as a means to avoid this. We draw on political science and psychology to set out a suitable framework for comparing global regions such as the EU, and show how the various contributions to the special issue demonstrate the utility for EU studies scholars of a more sustained, and more routinised, engagement with the work on ‘new regionalism’.
South-South Migration and Remittances is part of the World Bank Working Paper series. These papers are published to communicate the results of the Bank's ongoing research and to stimulate public discussion. In this paper, we report preliminary results from an ongoing effort to improve data on bilateral migration stocks. We set out some working hypotheses on the determinants and socioeconomic implications of South-South migration. Contrary to popular perception that migration is mostly a South-North phenomenon, South-South migration is large. Available data from national censuses suggest that nearly half of the migrants from developing countries reside in other developing countries. Almost 80 percent of South South migration takes place between countries with contiguous borders. Estimates of South-South remittances range from 9 to 30 percent of developing countries' remittance receipts in 2005. Although the impact of South South migration on the income of migrants and natives is smaller than for South-North migration, small increases in income can have substantial welfare implications for the poor. The costs of South-South remittances are even higher than those of North-South remittances. These findings suggest that policymakers should pay attention to the complex challenges that developing countries face not only as countries of origin, but also as countries of destination.
Local polynomial regression is a generalization of local mean smoothing as described by Nadaraya (1964) and Watson (1964). Instead of fitting a local mean, one instead fits a local pth-order polynomial. Calculations for local polynomial regression are naturally more complex than those for local means, but local polynomial smooths have better statistical properties. The computational complexity may, however, be alleviated by using a Stata plugin. In this article, we describe the locpoly command for performing local polynomial regression. The calculations involved are implemented in both ado-code and with a plugin, allowing the user to assess the speed improvement obtained from using the plugin. Source code for the plugin is also provided as part of the package for this program.
The dramatic increases in transnational mobility and communication over the last decades give rise to the question whether the world is globally integrating or whether regions are emerging as a new layer of societal integration beyond the nation-state. Yet, our knowledge in this regard is still rather limited, as researchers have thus far modeled regionalization and globalization as either independent from or dependent on each other and their conclusions are heavily contingent upon this decision. Furthermore, most past empirical studies on this issue have focused on economic and institutional ties, disregarding people’s cross-border activity. This article aims to (a) clarify the relation between regionalization and globalization via a novel conceptualization that allows to model the two processes as both complementary and competitive and thus to compare resulting outcomes, and (b) empirically trace regionalization and globalization in five types of transnational human mobility (asylum-seeking, migration, refuge-seeking, studying abroad and tourism) between 2000 and 2010. Network analyses of flows between 38,220 country dyads reveal that while in absolute terms both regionalization and globalization occur, regional integration exceeds global integration. While this effect is found for all regions, it is strongest in Latin America and the Caribbean. Consequentially, world regions do constitute an increasingly salient layer of societal integration beyond the nation-state. This finding contradicts basic assumptions of world systems theory’s core-periphery model, demanding for rethinking the structure of the transnational world, paying increased attention to the role of regions as a relevant layer of societal integration between the nation-state and world society.
Translator's Introduction: This essay appears to have been occasioned by a passing remark made by Kant's colleague and follower Johann Schultz in a 1784 article in the Gotha Learned Papers. In order to make good on Schultz's remark, Kant wrote this article, which appeared in the Berlinische Monatsschrift late in the same year. This is the first, and despite its brevity the most fully worked out, statement of his philosophy of history. The “idea” referred to in the title is a theoretical idea, that is, an a priori conception of a theoretical program to maximize the comprehensibility of human history. It anticipates much of the theory of the use of natural teleology in the theoretical understanding of nature that Kant was to develop over five years later in the Critique of the Power of Judgment. But this theoretical idea also stands in a close and complex relationship to Kant's moral and political philosophy, and to his conception of practical faith in divine providence. Especially prominent in it is the first statement of Kant's famous conception of a federation of states united to secure perpetual peace between nations. The Idea for a Universal History also contained several propositions that were soon to be disputed by J. G. Herder in his Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of Humanity, leading to Kant's reply in his reviews of that work (1785) and in the Conjectural Beginning of Human History (1786). Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht was first published in the Berlinische Monatsschrift IV (November 11, 1784).
This article examines the behavior of the Guanta´namo detainees in terms of collaboration and disobedience and how it influences their chances of getting a release recommendation. Joint Task Force Guantanamo–authored memoranda on 765 detainees are used to create a network of accusations between detainees and an attribute data set, which are analyzed using multivariate regression and Kolmogorov–
Smirnov tests. It is found that while the distribution of incriminating statements obeys a power law, 62.6 percent of all detainees do not incriminate anyone. Yemenis and Saudi Arabians heavily overcontribute regarding incriminating statements and disobedient actions, whereas Afghans and Pakistanis undercontribute. Disobedient behavior does not affect the likelihood of getting a release recommendation, except for hunger striking, which has a negative effect. By releasing information, detainees don’t improve their own chances of getting release recommendations but impair those of the detainees they implicate. Three different groups of detainees are identified whose behavioral patterns seem to follow distinct logics.
We define transnationalization as the relationship between the amount of internal communication and external (boarder crossing) communication of a subsystem of a nation state. This article tries to give empirical answers to three research questions: 1. To what extent are the different subsystems (science, art, economy, politics) of the society of Germany transnationalized and was there an increase in transnationalization in the period 1950-1995, as the notion of transnationalization and globalization suggests? 2. The comparison between different subsystems will show that they do indeed have different levels of transnationalization. We use an inter-systemic comparison to generate hypotheses about the causes of different levels of transnationalization. 3. Finally we ask what effects the process of transnationalization will have on the political system. Processes of transnationalization can be politically contained if the political system develops in the same direction of transnationalization as the other systems of society. We differentiate between the regulatory and the integrative functions of the political system and ask whether and to what extent the European Union will be able to regulate and integrate processes of transnationalization especially those of the economy.
In sociological transnationalization research, it is conventional wisdom that the upper strata are more involved in cross-border activities than the lower ones. However, proponents of the individualization/death-of-class thesis have argued that the significance of class (and of inequalities in general) for people’s actions is declining in affluent societies. Using these theories as a point of departure, this article investigates the influence of class and inequalities, more generally, on transnational activity. Using Eurobarometer 73.3 data from 27 European countries, this article examines (a) the extent to which class determines, by itself, in conjunction with other inequalities, and relative to heterogeneities, transnational practices within countries; and (b) how much the social gradient of transnational activity produced by class and inequalities varies across countries, and whether socioeconomic development tends to decrease or increase this gradient. The findings show that, in most countries, heterogeneities explain more variance in transnational activity than class, but not more variance than inequalities as more generally conceived. Further, social gradients in transnational activity are systematically larger in more affluent European countries.
This paper is about the role of technology in the transformation of space, and the ways in which these changes are represented. The author contrasts the place of technology as expressed through varied emphases on the annihilation of space, and the production of space. The dramatic restructuring of space and time in recent decades, associated with new high-speed geographies of production, exchange, and consumption, has been theorized against the backdrop of a "shrinking world'. The popular conception of the world shrinking to a global village is generally seen as the product of technological advances in telecommunications, transportation, and "information'. The author argues that, although these metaphors help to theorize the relativity of space - as the global impinges on the local - they only do so by obfuscating the relative space of everyday life and the increasingly technical means through which it is produced. The author suggests the role of technology in the transformation of space is not limited to globalizing processes through which the world has been made increasingly interconnected in space and time. Technology has been critical to the domination of conceived space over lived space as social relations are spatialized at the scale of experience. As a foundation for these arguments, the social relations of technology and technological change are theorized through the incorporation of ideas from the social studies of science and technology and from critical human geography. -from Author
This research investigates Stouffer's theory of intervening opportunities applied to disaggregated migration flows. Flows and opportunities are classified into functional categories composed of industrial types. Analysis of 1970 Public Use Sample data indicates that the theory of intervening opportunities does not represent all migration flows. The spatial distribution of opportunities influences more those migrant populations in the later stage of the production sequence, drawn to dense distributions of opportunities. The model's ineffectiveness for migrants engaged in functions more immediately dependent upon resource extraction possibly reflects the failure to consider nonfunctional opportunities and suggests the need for a more meaningful method of operationalizing the opportunities concepts.
This article seeks to conceptually clarify the measurement of Europeanization from a transactional perspective. Following Karl Deutsch, we regard cross-border practices and sense of community as constitutive for an emerging European society. But we critically reassess how this approach has been put into empirical practice by contemporary scholars. Typically, too much attention is paid to absolute Europeanization, and too little to relative Europeanization. In order to properly investigate the European society as situated between the nation-state and the world society, we argue that Europeanization involves both national openness (the salience of Europe compared to the nation-state) and external closure (the salience of Europe compared to the world). Three indices are suggested to capture relative Europeanization and its major components. Recent Eurobarometer and European Values Study data on practices and attitudes of EU citizens is used to illustrate our approach empirically. The results demonstrate that external closure adds a new layer of information for understanding everyday life Europeanization. We also find a bifurcation between practices for which Europe is the more relevant reference frame (as compared to the world) and attitudes for which it is not.
Utilizing data from the UNWTO, IMF, World Bank, and UNESCO, this article analyzes the global structure of travel and its deep asymmetries, revealing that travel is not global but is highly concentrated among a handful of countries. Furthermore, I find that the effects of globalization are neither universal nor consistent but depend upon the identities of countries involved and their relationships with one another. This article conceptualizes travel as a result of the relationship between country attributes within a given country-pair. More specifically, it investigates the relationship between travel and relative inequalities, institutional connections, and cultural wealth. I find that measures of inequality and cultural wealth differ depending on the relationship between country-pairs while institutional connections are significant across models.
This paper presents global matrices of bilateral migrant stocks spanning the period 1960-2000, disaggregated by gender and based primarily on the foreign-born concept. Over one thousand separate census and population register records are combined to construct decennial matrices corresponding to census rounds for the entire period. In doing so, we provide for the first time, a complete picture of bilateral global migration over the last half of the twentieth century. The data reveal that the global migrant stock more than doubled from 76 to 159 million between 1960 and 2000. Quantitatively, South-South migration dominates the global migrant stock, constituting half of all international migration in 2000. In part, this is an artifact of the data, since millions of migrants were created overnight during the dissolution of India and Soviet Union. South-North migration is the fastest growing component of international migration however, and over our period the emigrant stock from Latin America surpassed those of both Europe and South Asia. The United States remains the most important migrant destination in the world, home to one fifth of the world's migrants and the recipient of no less than fifty of the top migrant corridors in the world. Migration in Western Europe remains largely from elsewhere in Europe and the oil-rich Persian Gulf countries emerge as important destinations for migrants from the Middle East and South Asia. Finally, although the global migrant stock is still predominantly male, the percentage of females rose significantly between 1960 and 2000.
This paper studies the impact of physical distance and different relational proximity types on the formation of the Internet infrastructure. Although there is some anecdotal evidence on the 'end of geography' effect of the Internet, the relationship between physical space and the Internet has not been yet scrutinized. In addition, owing to the network nature of the Internet, the structure of the Internet infrastructure (the cyber-place) cannot be approached in a unidimensional way. Our paper builds upon recent studies in economic geography and relational proximities, and aims to study whether physical distance survives in virtual geography even after controlling for relational proximities. In order to do so, a unique and extensive database with geo-coded IP links is utilized. Based on this, a spatial interaction model with panel data specifications is constructed to study the impact of different types of proximity on the formation of cyber-place. The above analysis is framed by a complex network analysis exercise, which enhances our understanding of the complexity of the Internet infrastructure from a spatial network perspective. Our results indicate that physical distance, but also different relational proximities, have a significant impact on the intensity of the Internet infrastructure, highlighting the spatiality of the Internet.
The Curve Estimation procedure produces curve estimation regression statistics and related plots between two variables for 35 different curve estimation regression models (Linear, Logarithmic, Inverse, Quadratic, Cubic, Power, Compound, S-curve, Logistic, Growth, Exponential, Vapor Pressure, Reciprocal Logarithm, Modified Power, Shifted Power, Geometric, Modified Geometric, Root, Hoerl, Modified Hoerl, Reciprocal, Reciprocal Quadratic, Bleasdale, Harris, Exponential Association, Three-Parameter Exponential Association, Saturation-Growth Rate, Gompertz Relation, Richards, MMF, Weibull, Sinusoidal, Gaussian, Heat Capacity, Rational).
We explore the behavior of random walkers that fly instantaneously between successive sites, however distant, and those that must walk between these sites. The latter case is related to intermittent behavior in Joseph- son junctions and to turbulent diffusion.
This article examines the impact of distance on global tourist flows through an analysis of departing visitor share from 41 major source markets to 146 destinations. The study concludes that 80% of all international travel occurs to countries within 1,000 kilometers of the source market and that, with few exceptions, distant destinations have great difficulty attracting more than a 1% or 2% share of departures. However, high volatility in share within each distance cohort was also noted. Regression analysis of variation in share by distance suggests that market access and the level of tourism development within a destination distort movement patterns regardless of distance. Relationship variables played an important role in short-haul travel; a mix of source, destination, and relationship characteristics influence travel to medium haul destinations; and destination attributes influence share at long-haul destinations.
Historians have persistently likened strike waves to wildfires, avalanches, and epidemics. These phenomena are characterized by a power-law distribution of event sizes. This kind of analysis is applied to outbreaks of class conflict in Chicago from 1881 to 1886. Events are defined as individual strikes or miniature strike waves; size is measured by the number of establishments or workers involved. In each case, events follow a power law spanning two or three orders of magnitude. A similar pattern is found for strikes in Paris from 1890 to 1899. The "forest fire" model serves to illustrate the kind of process that can generate this distribution.
This article extends the homophily principle (similarity breeds connection) found in many social networks to the study of global trade. Using a large data set about global bilateral trade from 1950 through 2000, analyzed by the gravity model borrowed from international economics, this study identifies increased geographic and cultural homophily in global trade, suggesting that countries increasingly favor their geographically and culturally proximate counterparts in global trade. Another analysis of bilateral trade data at the sector level produces an explanation for this observed intensification of geo-cultural homophily. The technological and institutional improvements facilitate disintegration of productive activities and product differentiation, thereby intensifying geo-cultural homophily in the intermediate input and finished manufacture sectors; moreover, trade expansion in these geo-culturally sensitive sectors outpaces geo-culturally less sensitive sectors such as the raw material sector. This differential expansion of trade across sectors shifts the composition of the overall global trade and makes it more subject to geo-cultural influences. Taken together, global trade has become more geo-culturally embedded. Instead of eliminating geo-cultural homophily in global economic activities, ironically, the improved technologies provide better conditions for it to materialize and grow.
When we speak of an international system , we start with the presumption that there is something habitual and regular about the behavior of the nations that constitute it. Unfortunately, the concept of an international system has had a singularly hollow ring in the works of many scholars who have employed the term. It is frequently compared to an incredibly complicated watch or thermostat, or alternatively it is defined so abstractly that it would appear to have no specific empirical referents—and therefore practically everything in one way or another would qualify as a “system.”
The abstract and shadowy significance of the concept in international relations studies has retarded its usefulness for exploring the regularities that underlie the interactions of nations. More than ever before, however, the actions of nations have multiple reverberations on each other and can be ascribed meaning only within the context of the relations of many nations with each other. Because the configuration of inter-nation relations has become increasingly complex, it has become more and more difficult to trace out these relations and determine what structure, if any, there is in the “system.”
We shall see later that any definition of a system is arbitrary to the extent that its inclusion and exclusion rules are arbitrary. If we can specify the simplifying assumptions which create this arbitrariness, however, then the problematic cases included or excluded in a system or component subsystems can usually be identified and explained. This approach seems preferable to positing systems criteria that are either ambiguous or non-operational, enriching the vocabulary but not the analysis.
The loss of strength gradient (LSG), which demonstrates the importance of geographic distance and the advantage of forward basing, has been under attack. Proximity is supposedly becoming less important for prevailing in war. It is a view that has been expressed not only by President George W. Bush but even by the person who devised the LSG, Kenneth Boulding. As a result, it is being used as reason for the withdrawal of U.S. forces back to the American homeland. However, this view is flawed. Distance is retaining its importance as a result of two factors: the competitive nature of war and the impermanence of great-power status. The United States cannot withdraw forward-positioned forces and expect to maintain permanently the same power projection capabilities.
A close examination of the effects of social (language) and physical distance on the global communication networks revealed that these two factors played important roles in global communication networks. The results of this study showed that language similar ities/differences (whether or not its citizens spoke the four languages - English, German, French, and Spanish) were significantly related to the structure of the four global communica tion networks, that is telecommunication, written, physical, and face-to-face communication, represented by telephone, mail, trade, and transportation networks respectively. There were also statistically significant relationships between a country's physical location and language similarities/differences and the structure of the four global communication networks. Physical distance added incremental variance in the explanation of the telecommunication, written com munication, physical communication, and face-to-face communication network structure. It was found that the effect of social distance on telecommunication and written communication was stronger than that of social distance on face-to-face communication. On the other hand, the effect of physical distance on face-to-face communication was stronger than that of physical distance on telecommunication and written communication.
This chapter focuses on the international trade theory. It discusses the Ricardian and the Ricardo–Viner models. These models point to technological differences as the source of international comparative advantage. A simple Ricardian model has one input, labor, which is assumed to be mobile across the two sectors of the economy, but internationally immobile. The Ricardo–Viner model introduces into the model two additional factors that are sector-specific. This gives curvature to the production possibilities curve and also allows international commerce to affect the distribution of income. Although there is little or no direct empirical support for these simple models, there is nonetheless growing awareness that technological differences are a natural consequence of economic isolation and play a role in the integration process, following an economic liberalization. The chapter provides an overview of the Heckscher–Ohlin model and discusses the Rybcyzinski theorem and the Stolper–Samuelson theorem. It also reviews the studies of the Heckscher–Ohlin model based on cross country comparisons.
Examines the liberating impact of information technology on capital markets and international economic relationships, at a time when the role of the nation state is under debate and when ambitious new forms of international co-operation are replacing the post-war geopolitical structures.
A transnational studies perspective should be able to deal with both new social formations sui generis, such as transnational social spaces, and how ‘old’ national, international and local institutions acquire ‘new’ meanings and functions in the process of cross-border transactions. There is now a voluminous literature dealing with the emergence and above all the forms of transnational activities of migrants and the attendant consequences for the social integration of immigrants. If transnational ties and formations are consequential for social change and perhaps even social transformation, we also need to find indications about changing institutions in the national, international and local realms of transnational spaces. From this perspective we need not only to look at various transnational ties and formations across the borders of national states, but also at the repercussions for national and local institutions. In order to address this problem, the paper argues that both the concept of transnationalisation—including transnational social spaces—and world approaches, such as world systems and world polity theories, could be useful lenses to describe different aspects of transnational processes and boundaries. Second, transnational studies needs to engage both world theories and a transnational optic to ask about the social mechanisms by which transnational processes affect institutional change: path-dependency on a systemic or macro level, social closure, opportunity hoarding and brokerage on a collective or meso level, and symbolic recognition on a cognitive or micro level.
The grand rhetoric about “global communications” begins to look a little flimsy when compared to the real facts about international telephone calling. It has not exploded in recent years, and it has not become truly global.
Recent trends of mass-level euroscepticism seriously challenge Deutsch's transactionalist theory that increased transnational interactions trigger support for further political integration. While transnational interactions have indeed proliferated, public support for European integration has diminished. This article aims to solve this puzzle by arguing that transnational interaction is highly stratified across society. Its impact on EU support therefore only applies to a small portion of the public. The rest of the population not only fails to be prompted to support the integration process, but may see it as a threat to their realm. This is even more the case as, parallel to European integration, global trends of integration create tensions in national societies. The following hypotheses are proposed: first, the more transnational an individual, the less she or he is prone to be eurosceptical; and second, this effect is more pronounced in countries that are more globalised. A multilevel ordinal logit analysis of survey data from the 2006 Eurobarometer wave 65.1 confirms these hypotheses.
The effective distance between two places or objects, or individuals, cannot be measured in miles. It depends not only on physical distance but on economic distance (measured in terms of transport cost), communication distance (cost, efficiency, frequency of use and exchange of telephone calls, newspapers, radio and television programs, letters, etc.), social distanced (amount and type of interaction between individuals or groups), and others. Also, the distance may be different for each kind of transaction. Described here is a method for computing effective distance, and some suggestions for further investigation of the concept.
The “journey to crime,” or the study of the distance between an offender's residence and offense site, has been a subject of study within criminology for many years. Implications arising from such research touches the majority of criminological theories. An overriding conclusion from this line of research is that most crimes occur in relatively close proximity to the home of the offender. Termed the distance-decay function, a plot of the number of crimes that an offender commits decreases with increasing distance from the offender's residence. In a recent paper, Van Koppen and De Keijser raise the concern that inferring individual distance decay from aggregate-level data may be inappropriate. They assert that previous research reporting aggregated distance-decay functions conceals individual variations in the ranges of operation, which leads them to conclude that the distance-decay function is an artifact. We do not question the claim that researchers should not make inferences about individual behavior with data collected at the aggregate level. However, Van Koppen and De Keijser's analysis raises four important issues concerning (1) the interpretation of the ecological fallacy, (2) the assumption of linearity in offender movements, (3) the interpretation of geographic work on profiling, and (4) the assumption of random target selection within a delimited range of operation. Using both simulated and nonsimulated data, we present evidence that reaches vastly different conclusions from those reached by Van Koppen and De Keijser. The theoretical implications of our analyses and possibilities for future research are addressed.
GeoDist makes available the exhaustive set of gravity variables used in Mayer and Zignago (2005). GeoDist provides several geographical variables, in particular bilateral distances measured using citylevel data to assess the geographic distribution of population inside each nation. We have calculated different measures of bilateral distances available for most countries across the world (225 countries in the current version of the database). For most of them, different calculations of “intra-national distances” are also available. The GeoDist webpage provides two distinct files: a country-specific one (geo_cepii) and a dyadic one (dist_cepii) including a set of different distance and common dummy variables used in gravity equations to identify particular links between countries such as colonial past, common languages, contiguity. We try to improve upon the existing similar datasets in terms of geographical coverage, quality of measurement and number of variables provided.
Selections from the Chapter on CapitalSimple exchange. Relations between exchangers. Harmonies of equality, freedom, etc. (Bastiat, Proudhon)Transition from circulation to capitalist production.- Capital objectified labour etc.- Sum of values for production of values
The article elaborates a framework for understanding the relevance of transnational competence to the dynamics that mark the transformations of our time. Nongovernmental stakeholders interacting through dense civil-society networks that permeate domestic-foreign frontiers bear increasing responsibility for the course of events. Based on linked interests, interorganizational knowledge generation and aggregation, partnerships, and interpersonal/intercultural interactions, they are deeply involved in addressing the many challenges posed by an ever more interdependent world. Transnational competence lubricates transterritorial networks and projects. Here, the authors extend earlier work that posited a worldwide skill revolution both by developing explicit dimensions of transnational competence and by introducing a behavioral component. The new framework provides analytical groundwork for explaining why some people, groups, and networks are more effective than others in forging meaningful transnational solidarities, negotiating and benefiting from the intensifying experience of globalization, and waging successful transnational campaigns. The article also probes how the spread of transnational competence is being facilitated by global migration and transmigration trends. The final section explores the governance implications of expanding transnational competency for the emergent epoch.