Methodology and approach

The study was based on a cross-national and cross-regional mixed-method design. With the help of local partners,  data was collected from four major source and transit countries:

• Morocco
• Senegal
• Turkey
• Ukraine

In each of these four country surveys, ethnographic fieldwork and subsequent in-depth interviews were conducted in four research areas with different characteristics:

1. an area that is characterised by high emigration rates;
2. a comparable socio-economic area with low emigration;
3. a comparable area with a strong immigration history; and
4. an area with a specific human rights situation.

The aim was to gain a representative sample within each of the 16 research areas. The cooperation with local partners facilitated data collection and provide invaluable local expertise, and will also ensure a non-Eurocentric perspective which will improve the data quality.

By adopting a case-study approach that compared several emigration countries and various types of areas within these countries, the project shed more light on how perceptions, aspirations and decisions are formed, and on how they relate to each other.