Ricerc@Sapienza

This paper provides a unified view for defining a measure of the reasons behind migration
flows whose nature is of social and economic type. To this aim, worldwide migration
flows are here presented in the context of complex network and a related socio-economic indicator
is conceptualized. The ingredients of the indicator also include the economic strengths of the
countries and how they behave in terms of community structure, where community" has to
be intended in the sense of how countries interact in terms of immigration and emigration.
Empirical analyses on a wide set of real data validate the theoretical framework, hence giving a
paramount quantitative view of the roots of the worldwide migration
flows.