Migrant Social Integration Before Arrival: Evidence from 3.9 Billion Facebook Friendships

Social media platforms increasingly enable migrants to build ties and socially integrate in their destination country well before they physically relocate, yet conventional research on migration treats social integration as a post-arrival process. Using de-identified Facebook data from 2.1 million recent international migrants from 163 sending countries to five major destination countries – Canada, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States – we track 3.9 billion friendships formed before and after migration. We identify a distinct six-month migration preparatory phase preceding migration, during which migrants sharply increase the number of new online social ties formed with individuals in the destination country. In this same window, approximately half of migrants joined online community groups oriented toward integration; qualitative analysis shows these groups are largely organized around community-building, employment, and housing. Migrants who joined such groups formed roughly 63% more destination-country Facebook ties than comparable migrants who did not, and a substantial share of these ties later developed into close friendships. These findings show that migrant social integration begins before arrival, with social media platforms functioning as core infrastructure through which social integration itself is organized.