Lower-income countries are under-represented in migration research

Although scholars have long suggested that migration research is unevenly distributed across countries, evidence has been mostly anecdotal. This study provides the first systematic, global, and quantitative assessment of which countries receive research attention, which are overlooked, and what could be the potential reasons.

Our approach combined demographic analysis, text mining, and a new measure of country representation in migration research. We used text analysis to build a broad corpus of migration research that crosses disciplinary boundaries, including work published outside traditional migration journals. In the end, we identified 123,271 migration-related publications. We then measured each country’s research salience based on how often it appears in migration studies, and compared this to its emigrant and immigrant population stocks.

One of the major contributions of this work, in addition to expanding the corpus of migration-related publications beyond what was considered in previous literature on the distribution of migration research, was that we investigated both the countries studied as well as the countries of affiliation of authors. This enabled us to see who studies whom and whether certain regions, topics and populations were underrepresented in research based on their share of immigrants and emigrants. In our paper, we also analysed which regions were studied by whom and discuss why this could be.

Image

We found persistent inequalities in which countries are represented in migration research, which can be summarized in the following points:

• Overall, many countries with large migrant populations receive little sustained research attention, revealing major missed opportunities.
• Lower-income countries and those with low research investment are the most underrepresented, even after accounting for immigration and emigration levels.
• Higher-income countries are consistently overrepresented, benefiting from stronger research infrastructure and a larger pool of affiliated authors.
• Research is geographically concentrated in Europe, the Americas, and parts of Asia, while many countries in Africa, Asia, and the Americas are overlooked. For example, nearly half of African countries and around 40% of Asian countries are underrepresented.
• Authors’ affiliations are highly concentrated: over three-quarters of migration research is produced solely by authors based in high-income countries. Only 0.5% is produced exclusively by authors based in low-income countries.

In sum, global migration research tends to reproduce infrastructure inequalities, which are expressed in relevant countries being left behind. Many countries where migration is highly relevant are not being studied sufficiently, and these gaps reflect broader inequalities in global scientific production. This is also concerning as it shows that what we know about migration is dominated by only certain knowledge and perspectives and misses out on others.