*** The submission deadline for the 3rd Annual Meth@Mig Workshop has been extended to January 5, 2024. ***
3rd Annual Meth@Mig Workshop
Call for Contributions
Participant recruitment strategies and sampling methods in migration research
Workshop to be held at the GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences,
Mannheim, Germany
April 25-26, 2024
The IMISCOE Standing Committee “Methodological Approaches and Tools in Migration Research” (Meth@Mig) is inviting researchers of any methodological orientation to participate in its third annual workshop. This year, the workshop’s focus is on participant recruitment strategies and sampling methods in migration research.
Migrants are, in most cases, hard to identify and hard to reach for research purposes. Therefore, the question of how to find, select, and effectively recruit research participants is critical to any empirical project aiming to study migrants, be it through qualitative or quantitative methods. These challenges increase the more specific, and, therefore, the smaller the target population is. Importantly, the way in which participants are recruited often has direct consequences for the research process and the character of the resulting data. To give some examples, there are certain approaches that might lend themselves more to some modes of data collection than to others (e.g., online recruited participants might be interviewed more easily in web-based formats than face-to-face). Furthermore, sampling methods often have direct implications for the nature of conclusions that can be drawn from the data (e.g., probability vs. non-probability approaches; purposive vs. theoretical sampling techniques). Additionally, there are differences as to whether sampling criteria are predetermined by existing theories or whether inclusion criteria are established sequentially relying on an emerging theory, which is grounded in the data. Finally, while some approaches favor fixed sample sizes based on theoretical considerations, others use theoretical saturation as the golden standard for when to stop recruiting more participants. Moreover, besides these general considerations, new technologies offer new possibilities to identify, contact, and recruit target population individuals but might also be associated with new types of opportunity costs and biases.
Based on the idea that migration research has a lot to gain from methodological reflection and exchange, this workshop offers a forum for scholars to present and discuss procedures they use to recruit research participants and implications that these procedures might have for the research process. We welcome contributions from any methodological school or angle, e.g., qualitative, survey-based, mixed, or relying on digital trace data. However, a clear methodological focus is required.
The in-person workshop is organized by IMISCOE’s Standing Committee on Methodological Approaches and Tools in Migration Research (Meth@Mig) and will be held in Mannheim (Germany) at the GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences.
Please send an abstract of your planned contribution (approx. 300 words) to
Download the pdf version of this call here.
Organizing Committee:
Steffen Pötzschke, GESIS – Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences, Germany
Agata Górny, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw, Poland
Laila Omar, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Princeton University, USA
Sebastian Rinken, Institute for Advanced Social Studies, Spanish Research Council, Spain
Justyna Salamońska, Department of Management in Networked and Digital Societies, Kozminski University, Poland
Evren Yalaz, GRITIM-UPF, Spain