Sampling migrants in six European countries: how to develop a comparative design?

Abstract

This article discusses the possibilities and constraints of designing an identical or at least comparable sampling strategy across different European countries. It is based on expert reviews from six European Union member states that discuss the possibilities of sampling migrants in their respective countries. The country sample includes two countries from Northern Europe (Sweden, Denmark), two from Continental Europe (Germany, The Netherlands), and two from Southern Europe (Spain, Italy). After a discussion of various definitions of the target population and an overview of existing strategies to sample them, it is investigated which of them can be used in the six countries analyzed in the expert reviews. The focus is on probability samples and the use of population registers, while other sampling strategies are only briefly touched upon. The analysis shows that even with only six European countries an identical register-based sampling design is difficult. The authors propose that, by focusing on sampling immigrants in cities, researchers can better implement sampling strategies which result in comparable samples.

Untitled

“…in the industrialized capitalist countries, provide the competencies required for the international market. Hence, the third world countries come out with competencies that are compatible with the requirements of capital markets; these countries consider exploiting the dependence of developing countries, as they are the aspiration for their graduates (Andreß & Careja, 2018).…”

MOBILISE Data report: online surveys. Wave 1

“…Previous studies have resorted to varying strategies, such as sampling from population or foreigner register data, Random Digit Dialling (RDD) (Schaeffer et al, 2011), surname sampling from telephone directories (Ersanilli & Koopmans, 2013), Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) (Carling & Jolivet, 2017), snowball sampling, intercept-point sampling (McKenzie & Mistiaen, 2009), cross-national snowball sampling (Güveli et al, 2017), and online convenience sampling (Balter & Brunet, 2012;Potschke & Braun, 2017). Each of these strategies has its strengths and weaknesses (see McKenzie & Mistiaen, 2009;Ersanilli & Koopmans, 2013;Reichel & Morales, 2017;Andreß & Careja, 2018).…”

“…It is similarly likely that there are differences between migrants with regular and irregular migration status. Andreß & Careja (2018). Table 2 shows whether commonly used sampling methods meet the conditions set for the MOBILISE project.…”

Economic migration and challenges in an emerging Eastern European destination country: evidence about immigrant labor market integration in Romania

“…These differences in operationalization and definition of immigrants and migration are not specific to Romania alone. Most states or intergovernmental or supranational entities operate with their own understandings and definitions of migration and have different priorities in immigrant integration (Bertossi 2008;Andreß and Careja 2018;Careja and Bevelander 2018). Nevertheless if we aggregate these values and follow the evolution of immigrant figures in the UN statistics, we can see that the magnitude of immigration in Romania is moving by the end of this year towards the share of 2.2% of the total population, overpassing other emerging destinations such as Poland but falling below Czech Republic and Hungary (Migration Data Portal and UNDESA 2018).…”