On 10 February, Ettore Recchi and Tobias Grohmann, from the Migration Policy Centre at the EUI’s Robert Schuman Centre, launched the Global Transnational Mobility Dataset 2.0, which tracks international travel over 25 years (1995–2022).
In this conversation, they discuss the patterns revealed by these unprecedented country-to-country estimates, the implications of an approach that addresses the so-called settlement bias in migration research, and the broader potential of the dataset.
Research has historically focused almost exclusively on ‘migration’, but you use the concept of ‘mobility’ instead. What is the difference between the two, and what have we been missing by ignoring other types of international mobility?
Ettore Recchi: Governments deeply care about migration numbers, but they are missing the much larger story. Our dataset shows that ‘conventional migrants’ are just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath them lies a vast, largely invisibilised world of travellers whose movements shape economies, climate emissions, public health risks, and global inequality.
Let’s start from the basics. From a technical standpoint, international migration is defined as the outcome of two events: crossing a national border and remaining in the destination country for more than 12 months. The 12-month stay aspect of the definition is purely conventional, following a UN proposal that has been adopted by national statistics and academics worldwide. Consequently, individuals who move from country A to country B and stay for up to 364 days are not included in migration statistics. Now, a substantial share of migration spells last less than 12 consecutive months – think of digital nomads, seasonal workers, students in exchange. Our dataset shows that international population movements that do not fit the standard migration definition are more than 100 times larger than the orthodox migration numbers. In Europe, where the circulation of people across borders is at a global peak, this figure is almost 1000 times larger.
In other words, the traditional focus on ‘settlers’, drawing on a state-centred perspective, limits our understanding of the complexity and richness of global human mobility. Individuals who are not registered as migrants in national statistics nevertheless contribute significantly to the global economy as both producers and consumers. By focusing on ‘mobility’ rather than ‘settlement’, we gain a more comprehensive understanding of the population in question. In essence, we aspire to the same level of comprehensiveness that international economics pursues in its analysis of international trade flows.
This sounds like a major departure from the norm in migration research. How does your work relate to current migration studies?
Ettore Recchi: We share a claim made by critical scholars over the last decade: the necessity to ‘demigranticise’ migration studies. That is, get rid of the almost hegemonic ‘figure of the migrant’, which at the end of the day leans on some form of ‘othering’ – them vs us. We endorse this preoccupation and operationalise it in a rather unique way, by going beyond a merely conceptual critique and engaging with empirical research. We use ‘mobility’ to measure all border crossings in a neutral manner, with a performative function: to signal the equal dignity of every person on the move, regardless of their origin and the politically constructed status they may hold. Whenever we cross borders, we are all international movers.
We often hear that we live in a highly globalised world. Are people actually becoming more mobile over time?
Tobias Grohmann: Our data clearly point to a rapid expansion of international human mobility. For example, we show that the total amount of annual trips has grown more quickly than the world population. While in 1995 the world population was still larger than the total amount of trips (5.75 billion vs. 5.29), in 2019, we estimate a total of 10.66 billion trips, when the world population was at 7.81 billion.
Of course, the pandemic put a significant dent in this constant rise. Yet, mobility has recovered relatively quickly from this shock: in 2022, when our current data end, there were 8.13 billion trips; almost back to pre-pandemic levels. More recent travel and tourism data, released at the end of 2025 and not yet incorporated into our dataset, suggest that travel has surpassed pre-pandemic levels.
What patterns emerge on a global scale?
Tobias Grohmann: One of our first observations is that 93% of international mobility worldwide is intra-regional and that Europe plays a big part in shaping this pattern. On average, travel to European countries accounts for the majority of international mobility: 57% of all incoming trips in the world are to European countries, of which 94% are from other European countries. Moreover, intra-European travel has been growing more quickly than any other form of inter- or intraregional travel. This gives European countries a prominent role in shaping global mobility patterns.
We’ve also conducted a network analysis to identify the major clusters of international mobility, alongside their main hubs. Our results suggest that the system of international travel is clustered into eight to nine major groups of countries over time, largely corresponding to world regions: the Americas, Eastern and South-Eastern Asia and Oceania, Western Africa, Eastern Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. While these clusters have remained fairly stable over time, we also recorded some ‘tectonic’ shifts. For example, South America and the Caribbean initially formed a separate cluster, but they have merged with North America into a single Pan-American cluster since 2005.
Germany, at the centre of the European cluster, is the largest hub in global comparison. Behind that are the United States, China, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Türkyie, South Africa, and Senegal.
Who do you think could benefit most from this dataset?
Ettore Recchi: From climate taxation and pandemic preparedness to remittances and tourism recovery, policymakers are making high-stakes decisions without a clear picture of how people actually move across borders. Our dataset can help in many ways. Migration policymakers can forecast emerging corridors and mobility pressures long before they show up in asylum or residence data. Public health authorities can model epidemic spread using realistic, network-based mobility patterns rather than crude proxies or stylised models. Climate and environmental agencies can design differentiated travel taxes or caps based on the density of mobility corridors and their unequal carbon footprints. Development organisations and financial institutions can gain a clearer picture of the mobility patterns underpinning remittances and diaspora engagement. Global governance analysts can finally measure the sociological dimension of globalisation (direct population contacts across borders) largely missing from existing globalisation indexes.
The Global Transnational Mobility Dataset 2.0 is available on Zenodo. This open-access resource was developed by Ettore Recchi, Tobias Grohmann, and Luca Bernasconi within the framework of the Global Mobilities Project, which is a partner of MIGMOBS – The Orders and Borders of Global Inequality: Migration and Mobilities in Late Capitalism, an ERC project led by Adrian Favell.
Learn more about the Global Mobilities Project of the Migration Policy Centre.