Young Ethiopians’ Embeddedness in Migration Networks, the Role of Social Media and Their Perceptions of Western Migration Destinations

Abstract

networks and the use of social media influence the perceptions that young Ethiopians have of Western migration destinations?”. In total, 302 students took part in the quantitative element of the study. All these participants were bachelor students at the College of Social Science at the Addis Ababa University. A Multiple Regression Analysis was used to understand the influence of social media and migration networks on the perceptions that young Ethiopians have of Western migration destinations whilst controlling for gender, social status, household composition, age, growing up in a rural or urban environment, and religion. Additionally, four experts and five students from the Addis Ababa University were interviewed to gain more insight in this matter. Overall, discrepancy was found between the quantitative and qualitative results. The quantitative results showed that migration networks and social media do not influence the perceptions that young Ethiopians have of Western migration destinations. The qualitative results, on the other hand, indicated otherwise. These results showed that both independent variables do influence the perceptions of Western migration destinations which might lead to an image of Western countries that might be too positive. This research showed that, even though the results are contradicting each other, both the migration networks and social media do not seem to influence the perceptions that these young Ethiopians have of Western migration destinations. This might be due to the fact that these students are highly educated and therefore might be more critical towards the information that they receive about Western migration destinations. More research will be needed in order to reach consensus regarding these outcomes.