The Digital Footprint of Europes Refugees
Migrants leaving their homes for a new country often carry a 
The relationship between Arabic searches for the word “Greece” in Turkey and arrivals into Greece were not as highly linked following the 
Online Arabic searches in Turkey for the term “Greece” also track with the number of people from Syria and Iraq applying for asylum in EU countries, plus Norway and Switzerland. For example, the surge in online searches was followed by a spike in asylum applications from these countries one to two months later. Again, this is likely more than coincidence, as for some Syrian and Iraqi migrants the journey through Greece and on to other countries further north (
The digital footprints of migrants are not just limited to their initial journey. Once within Europe, refugees are expected to apply for asylum in the first European country they enter, and wait in that country for their applications to be processed.7 However, some refugees move between European countries, applying for refugee status in more than one along the way.8
Online, Arabic-language searches for the word “German” in the country of Germany provide another indicator of the migration flow of Syrians and Iraqis into Europe. (The search term “German” is a likely word new migrants would search when trying to translate text from Arabic to German online or to learn new German words). Online searches for “German” track with the number of new asylum applications of Syrian and Iraqi migrants in Germany for most of 2015 and 2016.
Migration from Turkey to Greece dropped off considerably following the EU-Turkey agreement in March 2016. But it appears that even though Syrian and Iraqi refugees may have largely stopped traveling to Europe after the agreement, Syrians and Iraqis already in Europe, such as those in Hungary, continued to find ways to enter Germany and other European countries and apply for asylum there. And several months could have passed before applications were registered within Germany, even though the refugees had arrived much earlier.
Google searches in Arabic for “German” remained strong even though asylum applications in Germany dropped off significantly by October 2016. As indicated by a growing number of new arrivals enrolled in German integration courses, Syrians and Iraqis may have continued to search for the term “German” even though the number of asylum applications has fallen.
Terminology
“Refugees” and “asylum seekers” are people who have crossed international borders to receive protection from persecution, war or violence. These populations remain refugees or asylum seekers until they are permanently resettled outside of their birth countries or return to their homelands. Even though “refugee” can denote a certain legal status in Europe, the terms “refugee,” “asylum seeker” and “migrant” are used interchangeably in this report to describe this population.
“Europe” is used in this report as shorthand for the 28 nation-states that form the European Union (EU) as well as Norway and Switzerland, for a total of 30 countries. At the time of this report's publication, the UK was still part of the European Union, although the country voted on June 23, 2016 to leave the EU.
“Internet searches” and “online searches” are used interchangeably and refer to searches users enter into search engines. The data used for this report relies on searches made on Google (see Google Trends below).
“Google Trends” is an analytical tool that reports the standardized volume of internet search terms on a scale of 0 to 100 entered into google.com during a specified period of time, based on location and language. This project uses data from the publicly available Google Trends website. See methodology for more information.
- This analysis comparing Google Trends with migration data uses a different methodology from an earlier Pew Research Center report focused on news coverage of the Flint water crisis. Unlike the earlier study on news consumption, the analysis of this report is based on publicly available data from Google. See this report's methodology for more details.↩
- Arabic is the primary language of Syrians and Iraqis in their home countries, but about 1% of the non-refugee population in Turkey speaks the language. Similarly, an estimated 0.5% (or about half a million) of Germany's population spoke Arabic prior the arrival of most Syrian and Iraqi refugees in 2015 and 2016, based on the foreign-born population from Arabic-speaking countries, according to migrant stock data from the United Nations for mid-year 2015.↩
- A 2013 report sponsored by the Turkish government indicates that nearly 90% of Syrian refugees in Turkey had a mobile phone and used it to communicate with relatives in Syria.↩
- Monthly refugee arrivals represent all nationalities, not only Syrians and Iraqis. Exact origins of refugees entering Greece each month are unavailable. However, annual refugee origins are available. Syrians and Iraqis, for example, were nearly two-thirds (65%) of all sea arrivals in 2015 and 2016 combined.↩
- Google Trends only releases hourly data for the previous seven days. Google Trends data for March 14 to 21 was captured on March 22, 2016, and is no longer publicly available. Analyses of most recent weeks when migration between Turkey and Greece has largely subsided do not always reveal the same pattern.↩
- An analysis of Google AdWords, a marketing tool that assists businesses in selecting the best terms for increasing traffic to their company website, indicates that monthly number of Arabic searches for “Greece” in Turkey were under 10,000 for most months. This smaller, monthly number of searches than actual migrants, combined with data showing search peaks in the middle of the night, suggests that internet users were primarily searching the web for migration purposes. See this report's methodology for more details.↩
- As per the Dublin regulation, asylum applicants are to apply in the first European country they enter. If they do not, they can be returned to the arrival country. However, that regulation was temporarily suspended by Germany during the height of the refugee crisis, permitting refugees to pass through several European countries in their journey to Germany.↩
- Eurostat recognizes that some countries may over count first-time applications even with increased information sharing on refugee applications between EU member-states using the EURODAC system.↩
