Retrospective data-gathering system on migrants and its generic methodological limitations: critical review

Abstract

The investigation focuses on the retrospective system as one of the two most common forms of data-gathering on migrants today. It is outlined that it is a tool that instrumentally provides the opportunity to form databases for a specifically selected period of time that has already passed, and not continuously, when events are happening directly. It is noted that the retrospective system is most often tested through methods such as censuses and surveys (sample investigations) in one or more rounds, using basic (place of birth and place of previous residence) and additional (citizenship and nationality) migration questions. Also, the focus of attention is highlighted on the disclosure of generic methodological limitations of this form, in particular coding, aggregation, sampling, system of enumeration and interpretation, the presence of which is determined by various factors, among which key are the reduction of financial costs, amount of human resource involvement, and time for completing tasks. The paper focuses that some of the methodological limitations are aimed at making the data more representative, while others are reduced to their adequate explanation in the complex interrelationship of the causes and consequences of migration processes, scale of current flows, and search for trends. It is argued that the reasons for the popularity of the retrospective data-gathering system on migrants are the objective differentiation between countries around the world (in particular, financial and technological), problem of agreement and coordination of joint efforts between national governments to implement permanent registers of migrants during the creation of information flows and majority support for the initiative to conduct population censuses with the inclusion of migration questions in their composition in the near future.