Abstract
Newspaper data are popular in Comparative Migration Studies as they allow diachronic and cross-national comparison and are relatively easy and inexpensive to acquire. Critics, however, warn that newspaper data are hampered by selection, description and researcher bias. This article argues that research drawing on newspaper data can be improved by employing mixed methods to confirm and complement data and to analyze findings from different research paradigms. To demonstrate this claim, I ethnographically re-analyze part of the dataset of the Mobilisation on Ethnic Relations, Citizenship and Immigration (MERCI) project. I chose MERCI as publications based on its data, which I am well acquainted with, have inspired numerous researchers and European comparative research projects to pursue newspaper content analysis. This article shows how an ethnographic approach can address description bias and researcher unreliability, and reveal selection bias. It offers concrete suggestions for incorporating political ethnography into newspaper analysis. In doing so it advocates a new path for empirical research in Comparative Migration Studies, one that bridges the qualitative-quantitative divide. The conclusion encourages researchers on both sides of the quantitative-qualitative spectrum to reconsider habitual and safe research paradigms and move towards the middle to improve the quality of their work.
Highlights
Over the past decades, newspapers have emerged as prominent sources in the Comparative Migration Studies
As newspaper analysis has grown in popularity, researchers have pointed to selection, description and researcher bias, questioning the quality of the data and suggesting limitations to their usefulness
While the re-coding and qualitative analysis of the MERCI sample could correct researcher and description bias, it could not address selection bias. The latter creates a skewed picture of the transnationalism-integration nexus since only specific forms of transnational politics are included in the newspaper sample
Summary
Newspapers have emerged as prominent sources in the Comparative Migration Studies. The re-analysis of the claims – the evidence on which Koopmans et al.’s (2005) conclusions are based - draws on my own data collection which included a survey in the Netherlands (N = 101), 241 in-depth interviews and participant observation during numerous political events in the Netherlands, Turkey and Surinam. Qualitative analysis of the claims showed that ‘exclusion’ from field-specific opportunities was hardly the driving force behind Kurdish diaspora politics Instead, it was the very inclusiveness of the Dutch legal system that allowed the Kurdish Parliament in Exile (PDKW) to be installed in the Netherlands, as the following example illustrates. While the re-coding and qualitative analysis of the MERCI sample could correct researcher and description bias, it could not address selection bias The latter creates a skewed picture of the transnationalism-integration nexus since only specific forms of transnational politics are included in the newspaper sample. Interdisciplinary fields such as migration and ethnic studies are good starting points for developing standards for team-based ethnography since they already make use of theme-based networks with researchers employing both quantitative and qualitative methods
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