Migration Research in a Digitized World Using Innovative Technology to Tackle Methodological Challenges

Steffen Pötzschke is a postdoctoral researcher and deputy team leader of the GESIS Panel at the GESIS – Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences in Mannheim (Germany). Furthermore, he is a corresponding member of the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (University of Osnabrück, Germany). Steffen holds a master’s degree in International Migration and Intercultural Relations and a doctorate (Dr. phil.) from the University of Osnabrück. Steffen participated in several migration research projects and has profound practical knowledge in designing and implementing cross-cultural surveys. In his recent research, he investigates the possibility of using social networking sites as tools to sample hard-to-reach populations.

Sebastian Rinken (PhD, European University Institute, 1996) is deputy director of the Spanish Research Council’s Institute for Advanced Social Studies (IESA-CSIC) in Córdoba. He has published widely on immigrant populations’ social integration and natives’ attitudes toward immigration and immigrants, addressing issues such as the relation between ideological polarization and anti-immigrant sentiment, as well as the methodological challenge of eluding social desirability bias, among many others. His methodological repertoire includes qualitative approaches, probability-based surveys, non-probability sampling for on-site and online surveys, and survey experiments.