Analysis of a Scholarly Article

Student’s Name

Institutional Affiliation

Course Tittle

Professor’s Name

Date

Migration Fears in the United States and the Geopolitical Risk Index

Introduction

Migration fears in the United States and the geopolitical risk index is a journal published by Technium Social Sciences Journal. The journal was published in August 2020 and written by Christopher Olds, the head of Fort Hays State University’s political science department. The purpose of conducting the study was to explore and understand the relationship between the migration fears in the U.S.A and the geopolitical risk index, which is a core indicator of political instabilities in international relations (Anderson, 2019). The research hypothesis states that; prior change in migration fears positively predicts an increase in geopolitical risk.

Summary

The journal is about a study conducted by Christopher to find the relationship between the publicly observable migration fears in the United States of America and the available geopolitical risk index. The period that is being analyzed in the journal starts from the year 1990-2019, where it was observed that changes in migration fears in the United States would increase the levels of geographical risk index. The United States discerns the immigrants as a potential threat, and in turn, they respond aggressively when interacting with other countries internationally. Measures have been developed to compute the migration fears intensity of various countries globally, such as Germany, the United States of America, France, and Great Britain. The language that the news coverage will use will be determined by how frequently a country perceives migrants. The United States for a long time has been eminent in geopolitical matters, and this is the reason why the study is conducted to measure if any changes in migration fears in the United States will impact the current discerned geopolitical risk index.

Research design and methods

In the study, the researcher uses an experimental research design to conduct the study. The data collection methods for this study included documents and records. The ideas of work by Baker et al. (2015) have been used to measure the variables. With the help of computers, an analysis of the number of times the United States appears to show migration fears in news headlines within the given timespan is conducted. In order to calculate the index, the sum of published articles with migration risks appearing on them is divided by the total number of articles published within the quarter of a year. The calculation results are a representation of the number of times the United States has appeared to show migration fears in a quarterly count.

The United States migration index is used instead of the migration economic uncertainty index because researchers found that the economic migration index measures migration’s economic variables and not the migration risks. In order to calculate the geopolitical risk index, the method was invented by Caldara and Lacoviello in 2019. The technique uses the same criteria as Baker et al. (2015), where a newspaper analysis of seven leading newspapers is done. The total number of published articles containing terms related to geopolitical risk is divided by the total number of published articles to calculate the index. The quarterly average geopolitical index had to be computed for the study for compering with the migration risk index.

The researcher had to account for any possible factors that would influence either the geopolitical risk or migration fears, so he studied three control variables. One of these control variables is caldera and Lacoviello’s events to increase the geopolitical index in the study period. The second variable is elections because of the uncertainties in the outcomes that can increase the geopolitical risk. The last control variable is an indication that the United States has recession periods; this is because there are high chances that economic uncertainty will influence geopolitical risk and migration fears (Schain, 2018). Since the study variables keep changing with time changes, then procedures on time series had to be implemented.

Data analysis

The time-series approach was used for the analysis of the data, which is a statistical analysis method. One of the time series procedures used includes the vector auto regression procedure, which simultaneously computes the chances that a previous change in the migration fears will predict the existing geopolitical risk levels. That earlier changes in geopolitical risk will predict the current levels of migration fears. In this time-series approach, to test for the hypothesis, the granger- causality test was used. The test helps find if previous changes of one variable can predict the current value of any other dependent variable measured. The advantage of the vector auto-regression is that it put all the previous factors for any dependent variable. It helps determine if any prior changes in one variable will predict a similar variable’s current level. This time series approach’s disadvantage is that it finds the causal relationship among variables but does not account for the direction and magnitude of the variables’ relationship.

The reason for the disadvantage of vector auto regression is that the use of lags in statistical analysis results in multi-linearity, leading to an alternative method that would account for the relationship between scale and polarity of variables. The second time series technique used for the research is the moving average representation which helped calculate the relationship between magnitude and direction of variables. This time-series approach helps test what happens over time to geopolitical risk when there are increased migration fears. Researchers need to determine if the endogenous system variables are dynamic or stationary before conducting either two-time series above. The reason for this is that static variables have statistical properties that are continual as time progresses. Variables that are stationary happen to be random in time, meaning they have no signs showing dynamics have followed a deterministic trend.

Critical analysis

The study’s findings were that; it was confirmed that previous changes in the migration fear levels would increase the geopolitical risk levels. In the U.S.A, when the concerns on migration continue to be on the rise, this will, in turn, lead to increased possible disruptions of the peace in international relations. The United States has been a prominent state in matters concerning international relations, and any actions of the state have consequences regardless of the levels of geopolitical risk. When the United States of America fears migrants seeking refuge, there will be an aggressive response from other countries, affecting the political stability of the entire continent. The research vector auto regression showed that previous changes in the migration levels in the United States significantly predict the existing geopolitical risk index levels.

The results also showed that previous geopolitical risk index changes did not significantly predict the current migration fear index. The study lasted for 29 years, but this did not establish any relationship between variables. A change on one variable would result in a difference in the other variable, which was proof that a reciprocal relationship between variables did not exist. Pieces of evidence show that variables stagnant in nature such that previous changes of variables will have significant predictions on the current values of the same variable. Among the three control variables, no variable seems to have an effective prediction of the existing migration fear index in America’s the United States. The economic regressions in the United States and global events positively and significantly affect the geopolitical risk levels.

Since migration fears in the United States greatly influence the geopolitical risk index, leaders from all parts of the world should be mindful of the United States’ current conditions. How the U.S. responds to these conditions has a great impact on global political affairs. From the study results, an increase in the migration fears index results in an immediate rise in the standard deviation of the global political index in the area of shock. From the study results, there was an increase in the migration index for one quarter. The geopolitical index did not bind away from the standard deviation, which means a relationship between the two variables.

Conclusion

An increase in migration fear levels will, in turn, will cause an increase in the geopolitical risk level. The increase in geopolitical risk index cases one standard deviation in the migration fear level, which lasts for eight quarters which turns to a standard deviation of zero in the ninth quarter after the shock. The analysis results show that the repercussions of an increase in the standard deviation by one in the migration fear index of the United States. The increase in geopolitical risk index can be more prominent when the United States migration fears index’s standard deviation increases.

References

Anderson, Ruben. No, go world: how fear is redrawing our maps and infecting our politics—University of California Press, 2019.

Schain, M. A. (2018). Shifting tides: Radical-right populism and immigration policy in Europe and the United States. Washington, DC: Ed. Migration Policy Institute.