Predicting migration from Romania to the UK with information from Google search engine

What is it about?

Google is one of the most popular search engines. People who consider migrating from one country to another often need information about potential employment and education opportunities, housing or trends in currency exchange rates. This article investigates if searches for information that contains such keywords as employment, education, housing, or currency in Google can improve short-term predictions of migration on a case study of migration from Romania to the UK between 2012 and 2019.

Featured Image

Photo by Nathana Rebouças on Unsplash

Photo by Nathana Rebouças on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This adds to a growing evidence on the usefulness of digital trace data, that is information left by Internet users, in capturing behaviours of (aspiring) migrants and predicting patterns of international migration.