Computational Research in Ethnic and Migration Studies

This book showcases the potential of computational approaches for research questions at the heart of migration and integration research via a set of original, cutting-edge empirical studies by a diverse, international team of authors.

Why do people emigrate? Do weather conditions and climate change affect decisions to migrate? How do migration networks evolve on a global scale? Can we predict refugee movements? How do host communities respond to the influx of refugees? Do right-wing populist parties get stronger where lots of refugees are located? Do terror attacks lead to more hostility towards immigrants? What mechanisms explain neighborhood ethnic segregation? The collection of studies in this book harnesses the power of an emerging interdisciplinary research field known as computational social science to shed new light on such classic questions of migration and integration research. The cutting-edge empirical studies use a wide range of computational approaches, from agent-based modeling and network analysis to machine learning, natural language processing, and advanced spatial methods and cover detailed spatial, textual, and network data from both online and offline sources. The book thus demonstrates the potential of computational approaches for migration and integration research, while also discussing the challenges that arise in this emerging field.

This book will be an invaluable resource for researchers, students of sociology, ethnic and migration studies, international politics, and computational social science. It was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.