Pull factors for university students’ mobility: a gravity model approach

Migration phenomena are characterised by flows that are typically multilateral. Often an outgoing flow corresponds to one or more incoming flows, which counterbalances it. When the balance is negative, socio-economic problems can arise. Italy has been afflicted for years by a particular type of unilateral migration: student mobility. Thousands of students leave the South to study in the Centre-North, driven by the better socio-economic conditions of those areas, and by more prosperous job prospects. Since this flow is not followed by a return one, nor by other incoming flows, the historical, socio-economic gap between North and South is widened. Taking advantage of the big dataset concerning the cohorts of students enrolling in Italian universities, made available by the Ministry of Education, we adopted the viewpoint of gravity models to investigate the social, economic and educational aspects of universities and destination areas that can make mobility attractive, studying them also over time.