Replication Data for: The ties that bind: The role of migrants in the uneven geography of international telephone traffic (with Richard Perkins), Global Networks,13 (1), 2013, pp. 79-100

Recent work suggests that migrants have been a major driving force in the dramatic growth of international telephony over recent decades, accounting for large rises in telephone calls between countries with strong immigrant/emigrant connections. Yet, the existing literature has done a poor job of evaluating the substantive importance of migrants in explaining large disparities in levels of bilateral voice traffic observed between different countries. It has also failed to go very far in examining how domestic and relational factors moderate (namely amplify or attenuate) the influence of migrant stocks on international calling. Our contribution addresses these gaps in the literature. For a sample, which includes a far larger number of countries than previous studies, we show that, together with shorter-term visitors, bilateral migrant stocks emerge as the relational variable with one of the substantively largest influences over cross-national patterns of telephone calls. We also find that the effect of bilateral migrant stocks on inter-country telephone traffic is greater where the country pairs are richer and more spatially distant from one another.

近期研究表明，近数十年来移民是推动国际电信业务迅猛增长的核心动力之一，助推了拥有紧密移民往来关系的国家间电话通话量的大幅攀升。然而，现有文献在评估移民对解释不同国家间双边语音通话量显著差异的实质重要性方面表现欠佳，同时也未能深入探讨国内因素与关系型因素如何调节（即增强或削弱）移民存量对国际通话的影响。本研究旨在弥补现有文献的这些研究空白：相较于既往研究，本研究采用了覆盖国家数量更多的样本，结果显示，双边移民存量与短期访客一同成为对跨国电话通话模式具有实质显著影响的核心关系型变量之一。此外，我们还发现，当两国人均收入更高、地理距离更远时，双边移民存量对跨国电话通话量的影响更为显著。