Call for contributions
(Spain) March 30-31st, 2023
The IMISCOE Standing Committee “Methodological Approaches and Tools in Migration Research” (Meth@Mig) is inviting researchers of any methodological orientation to participate in a workshop on the identification and mitigation of bias in migration studies.
Undistorted observation is one of the defining ambitions of scientific research. Different methodological approaches address this challenge in different ways, yet they all seek to avoid misrepresentations, or at least assess and reduce their impact. However, achieving that aim has proved elusive: even in the natural sciences, obtained data are affected by observation procedures. In the social sciences, quantitative methodologies seek to minimize various forms of measurement bias, whereas qualitative approaches ponder the impact of researchers’ positionality and subjectivity.
Migration scholars face added difficulties in this regard. Migrant populations are oftentimes dispersed, notoriously hard to locate, and potentially reluctant to participate; linguistic and cultural differences place added burdens. Therefore, administrative data are often incomplete or even incorrect, migrant surveys are typically subject to coverage, sampling, and response biases of unknown size, and qualitative studies risk being affected by sample selection, misunderstandings and withheld information. Such circumstances have induced a tendency to consider any data as “better than none”. The Meth@Mig SC’s activities in general, and this workshop in particular, are based on the idea that migration researchers have a lot to gain from methodological reflection.
This workshop offers a forum for scholars to present and discuss procedures and safeguards that help recognize and/or reduce bias in migration research. 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 workshop is organized by IMISCOE’s Standing Committee on Methodological Approaches and Tools in Migration Research (Meth@Mig) and will be hosted in Córdoba (Spain) at the Institute for Advanced Social Studies (IESA), a unit of the Spanish Research Council (CSIC).
Please send an abstract of your planned contribution (max. 300 words) to methatmig@gmail.com by December 15th, 2022; please state “Córdoba workshop” as email heading. Accepted proposals will be grouped into thematically cohesive sessions, which will consist of short and pointed contributions aiming to stimulate debate between panelists and among all workshop participants.
Organising Committee:
Sebastian Rinken, Institute for Advanced Social Studies, Spanish Research Council, Spain
Agata Górny, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw, Poland
Laila Omar, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto
Steffen Pötzschke, GESIS – Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences, Germany
Justyna Salamońska, Department of Management in Networked and Digital Societies, Kozminski University, Poland
Evren Yalaz, GRITIM-UPF, Spain
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