Migration und Mobilität

The Lab of Migration and Mobility contributes to advancing demographic research by strengthening how migration is measured, modeled, and understood. Migration is a central component of demographic change, alongside fertility and mortality. However, its empirical and theoretical foundations in demography have historically been less developed than those of other population processes. At a time when human mobility plays an increasingly consequential role in shaping populations, this imbalance has become more apparent. The Lab addresses this gap by developing a more explicit demographic perspective on migration, one that integrates advances in data, methods, and theory. Through a coordinated research agenda spanning the measurement and modeling of high-skilled migration and integration and segregation, the Lab seeks to generate new insights that both deepen our understanding of migration and reinforce its position at the center of demographic inquiry.

A core contribution of the Lab includes strengthening the empirical foundations of migration research and advancing migration modeling. By addressing the fragmentation and inconsistency of traditional data sources, the research area Measuring and Modeling Migration and Mobility establishes a new standard for demographic analysis. The integration of censuses, population registers, and surveys through advanced statistical frameworks, particularly Bayesian modeling, enables the production of harmonized and comparable migration estimates across countries and over time. The development of new data infrastructures represents a decisive step toward cumulative knowledge-building in demography. In parallel, this research advances migration modeling by incorporating theoretically grounded mechanisms, such as social networks, aspirations, and structural constraints, into formal models. Thus, our work challenges the limitations of traditional approaches and significantly improves their explanatory and predictive power. The integration of digital trace data further enhances this effort by enabling timely monitoring of migration dynamics, thereby overcoming longstanding delays in the release of official statistics.

The Lab’s second research area, High-Skilled Migration, highlights our commitment to reconceptualizing migration as a heterogeneous process. Rather than treating migration as a single phenomenon, our work in this area emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between different types of migration driven by distinct causal mechanisms. By focusing on high-skilled migration, the Lab addresses one of the most consequential yet poorly measured forms of mobility in contemporary societies. Leveraging large-scale digital trace data, from bibliometric records to professional online platforms, this research opens up entirely new empirical frontiers. It enables the tracking of individual mobility trajectories, the measurement of migration intentions, and the analysis of global talent flows at unprecedented scales. This approach not only fills critical data gaps, it also allows for a more direct linkage between theory and empirical observation, thus fostering a shift toward a cause-oriented understanding of migration processes.

The Lab’s work on the third research area, Integration and Segregation, expands the scope of demographic inquiry into domains that have traditionally remained difficult to measure. By incorporating digital environments into the analysis of integration, the Lab captures dimensions of social interaction that are increasingly central in contemporary societies. The development of novel indicators based on online behavior provides new ways to assess how migrants form social ties, engage with host populations, and navigate cultural contexts. At the same time, new measures of cultural distance and public attitudes introduce critical explanatory variables into migration research, enriching both empirical analyses and theoretical models. The Lab also advances the methodological study of segregation by rigorously evaluating and refining existing measures, ensuring that they more accurately reflect underlying social processes.

Taken together, these research areas position the Lab of Migration and Mobility as a driver of innovation in demography. By combining methodological rigor, theoretical advancement, and novel data sources, the Lab addresses longstanding limitations in the field while expanding its analytical scope. In doing so, it contributes to a more integrated, predictive, and analytically robust discipline.