The ‘who’ and the ‘what’ in international migration research: data-driven analysis of Scopus-indexed scientific literature

ABSTRACT

This paper offers a detailed, first-ever, in-depth, data-driven, review of debates pertaining to international migration (IM) as depicted by cross-disciplinary records collected in Scopus. Accordingly, the paper also makes a case for the value added of bibliometric analysis and new ways of its application. Specifically, to gain a thorough understanding of issues, names, and topics that have contributed to the IM debate since 1963, bibliometric analysis was conducted on 12.663 procured records. The findings suggest that regardless of the depth and breadth of the analysis, it is doomed to remain partial. That is, when confronted with academic work not available in Scopus, this study concludes that more work needs to be done to ensure, on the one hand, interoperability of research data repositories, and on the other hand, synergies among the until now divided research-communities research and publishing in the field of IM. Only in this way, it is argued, will it be possible to ensure transparency of research artefacts, identify issues and problems silenced and/or under-researched in the field, and finally enable more efficient dialogue between academia and decision-makers, including international organisations.

KEYWORDS:

• International migration
• bibliometric analysis
• big data
• decision making
• data repositories
• Scopus

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Saeed-Ul Hassan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6509-9190

Anna Visvizi http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3240-3771

Hajra Waheed http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0168-0063

Notes

1 http://www.vosviewer.com

2 http://www.vosviewer.com/documentation/Manual_VOSviewer_1.3.1.pdf

3 https://www.tableau.com/

Additional information

Funding

This work has been supported by the NRPU award (ref. no. 6857/Punjab/NRPU/R&D/HEC/2016) funded by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan. In addition, Dr Anna Visvizi would like to thank Effat University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for funding the research reported in this paper through the Research and Consultancy Institute.