Link-Tracing Designs for the Study of Multi-Sited International Migration

Giovanna Merli , Duke University
Ted Mouw, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Claire Le Barbenchon, Duke University
Allison Stolte, Duke University

Large-scale, influential studies of international migration to the U.S. from Mexico and other Latin American countries and to Europe from Africa have illustrated the prominence of space, time and relationship between places of origin and destination for the study of migration. They have also highlighted the empirical challenges of accommodating these concepts within research designs and data collection on migration. In this paper, we describe applications of novel link-tracing sampling designs, which can address some of the challenges to the collection of useful migrant samples. We discuss how variations on this sample recruitment approach was successively applied to studies fielded among Chinese and Mexican immigrants populations to the U.S. and across multiple sites and illustrate how this approach can address some of the challenges related to the recruitment of migrant samples: cost-effectiveness, population representation, survey participation and incorporation of multiple sites into research designs of migration.

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 Presented in Session 69. Multi-Sited Approaches of Migration