HMB2020: Human migration - potential areas for combinations of big data - SocInfo2020 Workshop CNR and Online, workshop at SocInfo2020 Pisa, Italy, October 6, 2020

Analysis of human migration is a very important topic that can improve the life of millions of people who are currently migrating due to difficult environmental or political contexts. Migration research covers a wide area of disciplines and is typically performed using various data types such as census data, registries and surveys, collected by governmental institutions and national statistics offices. These data suffer from a set of limitations related to time and space resolution, that makes analysis of a cross-border phenomenon such as migration far from straight-forward.

Social big data have been proposed to fill some of the gaps and complement traditional data types. Approaches have started to appear, and they promise to enable the construction of new migration-related indices that can provide better time and space resolution. Analysis is difficult here as well, as big data may suffer from selection bias and other issues. It remains to be seen how these data will actually fill the gaps in traditional data, and whether they will open new avenues for migration research.

This HMBD2020 workshop aims to enable the sharing of experiences with big data and migration among an interdisciplinary set of researchers and audience. We want to bring together not only researchers from academia, but also from institutions working with migration, and industry. The overall objective is to understand better what are the plausible areas of study where big data can make a difference, and what are the methodologies employed to date.

The workshop is part of recently funded European project “HumMingBird: Enhanced migration measures from a multidimensional perspective”.

Submission Guidelines

PAPER SUBMISSION

• We welcome submissions of papers on topics related to migration research using big data. 
• The papers should be maximum 15 pages long in the Springer LNCS format, not including references.
• All papers must be original and not simultaneously submitted to another journal or conference.

EXTENDED ABSTRACT SUBMISSION

• We also welcome extended abstract submission of existing or ongoing work of high relevance to the workshop.
• The submission should be a maximum of 2 pages long in the Springer LNCS format, not included references.  

All submissions will be selected through single-blind review. 

List of Topics

Topics include but are not limited to:

• Understanding migration flows using big data sources. This may include nowcasting flows  using  social  media  data, visualisation  and  analysis  of  flows  using  big  data, prediction of flows based on big data, analysis of flows within very specific domains, e.g.  scientific migration, labour migration, seasonal migration.

• Estimating  migration  stocks  using  big  data.   This  topic  may  include  nowcasting immigration rates based on social media and other big data types, visualising such data, validating indices.

• Understanding push and pull factors in different types of migration, which can include analysis of the brain drain phenomenon, economic migration, data on refugees, sentiment analysis, etc.

• Studying the connection between policy changes and migration using big data analytics.

• Evaluating socio-economic and cultural  integration of migrants with big data. This can include analysis of different integration measures extracted from various types of data.

• Integrating big data models and traditional data sources for migration.

• Ethics of big data in the context of human migration.

Committees

Program Committee

• Albert Ali Salah, University of Utrecht, Netherlands
• Samin Aref, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Germany
• Simone Bertoli , Université Clairmont Auvergne, France
• Chiara Boldrini, National Research Council, Italy
• Matteo Bohm, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy
• Emanuele Del Fava, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Germany 
• Noemi Derzsy, AT&T Labs, USA
• Sophie Muetzel, Department of Sociology, University of Lucerne, Switzerland
• Cristina Muntean, National Research Council, Italy
• John Palmer, Pompeu Fabra University, Spain
• Daniela Perrotta, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Germany
• Laura Pollacci, National Research Council, Italy
• Francesco Rampazzo, University of Southampton, United Kingdom and Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Germany
• Alessandro Sorichetta, University of Southampton, UK
• Siiri Silm, Mobility Lab, University of Tartu, Estonia 
• Rajesh Sharma, University of Tartu, Estonia
• Ingmar Weber, Qatar Computing Research Institute, HBKU

Organizing committee

• Tuba Bircan, Department of Sociology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium Tuba.Bircan@vub.be
• Carlos Arcila Calderón, Department of Sociology and Communication, University of Salamanca, Spain carcila@usal.es
• Jisu Kim, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy jisu.kim@sns.it
• Alina Sîrbu, Department fo Computer Science, University of Pisa, Italy alina.sirbu@unipi.it

Publication

Selected works presented at HMBD2020 will be invited for publication in a Special Issue of a highly ranked Scientific Journal to be announced before the workshop.

Contact

alina.sirbu@unipi.it, jisu.kim@sns.it