Evelyn Ersanilli

EUMAGINE
Most previous studies on migration have focused on the impact of economic push-and-pull factors or the role of transnational social networks as drivers of migration and choice of destination country. EUMAGINE takes an innovative approach by looking at the role of imaginations and perceptions in the creation of migration aspirations and destination country preferences. It examines to what extent people see migration as a valuable life project, their perceptions of the human rights and democracy situation of their own country and Europe and how these relate to migration aspirations. The study is conducted in four countries with a long history of emigration and a more recent history of immigration; Morocco, Senegal, Turkey and the Ukraine. The target group consists of the general population aged 18-39 in four Research Areas in each country. The project has a mixed-method design with in each of the 16 Research Areas a survey of 500 people, followed by 20 in-depth interviews. I’m mainly involved in the quantitative part of the research. Together with Hein de Haas and Jørgen Carling, I was responsible for the development of the questionnaire and project-wide sampling strategy. The paper with the questionnaire, research guidelines and sampling plan can be found here. The project is funded under FP7 programme of the European Commission. It is conducted by a consortium of eight institutes from seven countries and is led by the University of Antwerp.

SCIICS – the Six Country Immigrant Integration Comparative Survey
In 2008 I coordinated the data collection for a telephone survey among people of Turkish origin in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden and Austria, and Moroccan origin in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium. The survey includes a comparison group of natives in all six countries. In total more than 9,000 respondents participated. The survey includes questions on both socio-cultural and socio-economic aspects of integration. It has been design to maximise the comparability of the data. This includes a narrowly defined target group (pre-1975 immigrants and their direct descendants) and the use of the same sampling strategy in all countries and for all groups. Together with Ruud Koopmans and other colleagues from the WZB I’m currently analysing the data, including data on transnational marriage, religiosity and segregation. The project is funded by the WZB.

The socio-cultural integration of Turkish immigrants and their descendants in France, Germany and the Netherlands
For my PhD I explored the effects of integration policies on socio-cultural integration by comparison of the levels of host culture adoption and ethnic retention among Turkish immigrants and their descendants in France, Germany and the Netherlands. These three countries have pursued different types of integration policies. Comparability is always a problem in international research. To minimise confounding variance the study focuses on a narrowly circumscribed target population. The target population consists of Turkish immigrants who come from two regions in Turkey (South-Central Anatolia and East-Central Anatolia), and who arrived during the guest-worker era (before 1975) and their children and grandchildren. The data consists of a bilingual telephone-survey conducted in 2005-2006 with 1,000 Turkish immigrants and descendants of Turkish immigrants. For this survey I developed the questionnaire, trained, recruited and supervised the interviewers. In addition, in 2007 I did 86 in-depth interviews with respondents of the telephone survey. I’m still analysing parts of the data collected in this project.