Mobility hub or hollow? Cross-border travelling in the Mediterranean, 1995–2016

Deutschmann, Emanuel, Recchi, Ettore and Bicchi, Federica ORCID: 0000-0003-0897-489X (2019) Mobility hub or hollow? Cross-border travelling in the Mediterranean, 1995–2016. Global Networks. ISSN 1470-2266

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Abstract

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.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14710374
Additional Information:	© 2019 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial Licence, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
Divisions:	International Relations
Subjects:	J Political Science > JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration
Date Deposited:	03 Dec 2019 16:51
Last Modified:	22 Nov 2024 20:09
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/102758

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