Geographical network of refugee movements
What is common between Sigmund Freud, The Dalai Lama, Karl Marx, Aristotle Onassis, Bob Marley, Albert Einstein, Marlene Dietrich, Madeleine Albright, Victor Hugo, Frédéric Chopin and Andy Garcia. Besides the fact that I am personally influenced by many of them, the one common factor is that they were all refugees during some phase of their lifetime. The term refugee is used for those who seek relief and refuge from economic, military, political, or social distress including war, famine, or civil strife. The earliest known instance of refuges was triggered by the invasion of Middle East by Sargon the Great of Mesopotamia (2270-2215 BC). Across the years, human conflicts, battles, wars and epidemics has been the root cause of human displacement. According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, a refugee is "any person who: owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country". Refugees are spread around the world, with more than half in Asia and about 20 percent in Africa. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) numbers indicate that by the end of 2011, number of forcibly displaced people worldwide exceeded 42.5 million. Out of this, 15.2 million were refugees (10.4 million under UNHCR's mandate, 4.8 million Palestinian refugees), 895,000 asylum-seekers and 26.4 million internally displaced persons.
According to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, "Refugees have been deprived of their homes, but they must not be deprived of their futures."
We are interested to understand refugee movement across countries over the past decade. Since we can model origin and destination countries as nodes and people movement as edges, we use social network analysis and visualisations for our purpose. Data about refugee movement across countries during 2000 - 2011 was obtained from UNHCR.
The below network graphs and charts trace annual as well as consolidated refugee movements from 2000-2011. Our consolidated dataset had 211 nodes and 6068 edges, with the nodes representing countries (source of refugees) and edges representing cross country refugee movements. Table 1 gives details of the number of nodes and edges over the years. Figure 1 is a chart of global refugees from 2000-2011.
Table 1: Nodes and Edges
|
|
2000 |
2001 |
2002 |
2003 |
2004 |
2005 |
2006 |
2007 |
2008 |
2009 |
2010 |
2011 |
|
Nodes |
192 |
188 |
193 |
193 |
192 |
192 |
197 |
199 |
199 |
202 |
204 |
205 |
|
Edges |
3205 |
3382 |
3657 |
3820 |
3991 |
4043 |
4136 |
4380 |
4505 |
4791 |
4888 |
4799 |
Figure 1: Global refugees from 2000-2011

Figure 2 is a source and destination country chart of the top ten global refugee movements from 2000-2011. The largest refugee movements were from Afghanistan to Pakistan (18,790,596), which accounted for 15% of the total, followed by Afghanistan to Islamic Republic of Iran (12,423,106 - 10%), Iraq to Syrian Arab Republic (6,146,922 - 5%), Burundi to United Republic of Tanzania (4,030,134 - 3%), Vietnam to China 3,591,405 - 3%), followed by others.
Figure 2: Country-wise global refugee movements from 2000 - 2011

We list below some key network graphs. The first set of graphs are based on aggregated data over the years 2000 - 2011 and the second set of graphs are based on annual data from the years 2000 and 2011. We have not included results for the other years for the sake of keeping this a short blog. Figures 3 & 4 are network graphs of refugee Inflows and Outflows from 2000-2011. The network graphs are based on weighted indegree as well as outdegree measures. The top ten refugee origins/destinations are also listed.
Figure 3: Network graphs of refugee Inflows from 2000 - 2011

Top 10: Pakistan, Islamic Rep. of Iran, Germany, Syrian Arab Rep., United Rep. of Tanzania, United States, Kenya, China, United Kingdom, Jordan
Figure 4: Network graphs of refugee Outflows from 2000 - 2011
Top 10: Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Dem. Rep. of the Congo, Burundi, Vietnam, Occupied Palestinian Territory, Angola, Myanmar
Figure 5 has network graphs of refugee flows during 2011. The network graphs are based on weighted indegree as well as outdegree measures. The top ten refugee origins/destinations are also listed.
Figure 5: Network graphs of refugee flows during 2011
|
Graph of Refugee Inflows - 2011 |
Graph of Refugee Outflows - 2011 |
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|
|
|
Top 10: Pakistan, Islamic Rep. of Iran, Syrian Arab Rep., Germany, Kenya, Jordan, Chad, China, Ethiopia, United States |
Top 10: Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Dem. Rep. of the Congo, Myanmar, Colombia, Vietnam, Eritrea, China |
Figure 6: Network graphs of refugee flows during 2000
|
Graph of Refugee Inflows - 2000 |
Graph of Refugee Outflows - 2000 |
|
|
|
|
Top 10: Pakistan, Islamic Rep. of Iran, Germany, United Rep. of Tanzania, United States, Serbia (and Kosovo: S/RES/1244 (1999), Guinea, Sudan, Dem. Rep. of the Congo, China |
Top 10: Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Dem. Rep. of the Congo, Myanmar, Colombia, Vietnam, Eritrea, China |






Betweeness


We observed 30 prominent clusters and 17 smaller clusters (2 or 3 entities).

The network graphs below are varying visualisations of companies and their board membership. 







Mitt Romney














The resulting associated network statistics are given below. Table 1 lists the top 10 drugs and their active ingredients based on network centrality measures such as Degree, Closeness, Page Rank, Betweeness and Eigenvector. The measures are listed in the decreasing order of their scores. The shaded blocks are the drugs with Proprietary Names which had high scores.
