Migration, communities on the move and international innovation networks: an empirical analysis of Spanish regions

Anna D’Ambrosio, Sandro Montresor (sandro.montresor@unitn.it), Mario Davide Parrilli and Francesco Quatraro
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Anna D'Ambrosio

Regional Studies, 2019, vol. 53, issue 1, 6-16

Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of migration on innovation networks between regions and foreign countries. It posits that immigrants (emigrants) act as a transnational knowledge bridge between the host (home) regions and their origin (destination) countries, thus facilitating their co-inventorship networks. It also argues that the social capital of both the hosting and the moving communities reinforces such a bridging role, along with language commonality and migrants’ human capital. Focusing on Spain, as a country that hosted an intense process of migration over the past two decades, patent data are combined with national data on residents and electors abroad and a gravity model is applied to the co-inventorship between Spanish provinces (NUTS-3 regions) and a number of foreign countries. Both immigrants and emigrants affect the kind of innovation networking at stake. The social capital of both the moving and the hosting communities actually moderates this impact positively. The effect of migration is stronger for more skilled migrants and with respect to non-Spanish-speaking countries, pointing to a language-bridging role of migrants. Policy implications are drawn accordingly.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00343404.2018.1426850 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Migration, communities-on-the-move and international innovation networks: An empirical analysis of Spanish regions (2017)
Working Paper: Migration, communities-on-the-move and international innovation networks: An empirical analysis of Spanish regions (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:regstd:v:53:y:2019:i:1:p:6-16

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CRES20

DOI: 10.1080/00343404.2018.1426850

Access Statistics for this article

Regional Studies is currently edited by Ivan Turok

More articles in Regional Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst (chris.longhurst@tandf.co.uk).