The Mediterranean is often portrayed as a hub of human mobility. In this article, we test this widespread view by exploring the structure of travel flows in the region over the last two decades (1995–2016). We find that mobility is much higher and increasing more strongly along the northern than along the southern shore, thus creating a growing mobility divide. South–north and north–south movements are even scarcer and stagnate or even decline over time. With a Gini coefficient of .87, mobility flows are distributed extremely unequally across country pairs in the Mediterranean. Community detection algorithms reconfirm that mobility predominantly takes place in disparate clusters around the Mediterranean, not across it. These findings imply that a ‘neo‐Braudelian’ view of the Mediterranean as a mobility hub is less justified than a ‘Rio Grande’ perspective that conceives of the Mediterranean as a mobility hollow. Multivariate regression models for network data suggest that geographical distance and, to a lesser extent, political visa regulations, explain the unequal mobility structure better than differences in economic well‐being.

中文翻译：

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移动枢纽还是空心？1995–2016年，地中海地区的跨境旅行

地中海常被描绘成人类活动的中心。在本文中，我们通过探索过去二十年（1995-2016年）该地区的旅行流量结构来检验这种广泛的观点。我们发现，北部的流动性比南部沿岸的流动性高得多，并且增长幅度更大，因此造成了越来越大的流动性鸿沟。随着时间的推移，南北向和南北向运动甚至更加稀少，停滞甚至下降。在基尼系数为0.87的情况下，流动性在地中海国家之间的分配极为不均。社区检测算法重新确认了移动性主要发生在周围的不同集群中地中海，而不是整个地中海。这些发现表明，将地中海视为流动中心的“新布鲁德良派”观点不如“里约格兰德”观点合理。网络数据的多元回归模型表明，地理距离和较小范围内的政治签证规定比经济福利的差异更好地解释了流动性不平等的结构。