Fifty years of the world academic migration network

Abstract This study investigates how globalization has reshaped the world academic migration network. Using affiliation changes across almost 50 million Scopus articles, I construct five-decade-aggregated networks covering the period from 1974 to 2023. Three findings stand out. The network densifies and grows more equal: more country pairs are connected in each successive decade, and the share of flows captured by the largest hubs falls steadily, even as the United States retains the central position throughout. Reciprocity stays high at every threshold and in every decade, so academic migration is circulatory in structure rather than a one-directional drain from periphery to core. The rise of Asia takes the form of integration of China, India, and South Korea into the US-centered core, not a separate Asian cluster.