ISS is looking for a post-doctoral researcher to support research on migration decision-making as part of an EU funded PACES project, “Making migration and migration policy decisions amidst societal transformations”. The position entails working with the leading partner in the PACES consortium to support research on the decision-making of residents and migrants in different locations in African and European countries.
The PACES project studies the process of making decisions to stay and migrate using a social transformation and life course approach. The post-doc will adopt the PACES conceptual framework and methodology to carry out data collection, monitoring and analysis in Ethiopia and Nigeria in collaboration with PACES partners. The post-doc researcher will also support the monitoring and analysis of data in Algeria. The post-doc will also contribute to the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data collected by PACES partners and to the elaboration of a heuristic model that identifies different constellations of conditions that influence decisions to stay and migrate at various stages of individual life trajectories and migrant journeys.
The successful applicant will work as part of an international project consortium and in close collaboration with the project leader at ISS, Dr. Simona Vezzoli, and with 3-4 partners. Given this collaborative role, the post-doc will organize and lead internal meetings to discuss empirical findings and their conceptual consequences and present project-related insights at conferences and other public events for academics, policymakers, and the general public.
Job description As part of a large consortium, the post-doc will support the project leader with the coordination of research on migration decision-making carried out by PACES project partners. The post-doc will be responsible for collecting primary data and coordinate with other project partners to ensure all data collection components are fulfilled. The post-doc will contribute to the analysis of data collected in other work packages with the objective of producing analyses that compare migration decisions-making across places and over time.
For the primary data collection, the post-doc will collect data through archival research and interviews of experts, residents, and migrants. The post-doc will work with partners to create datasets compiling data on social transformation and the life course from various research sites. For the data analysis, the post-doc will have experience with qualitative data analysis of interviews and strong statistical skills to analyze survey data and other micro-level data. More generally, varied methodologies and data collection approaches are applied in PACES, and a general understanding of these varied methods and analytical tools is needed to liaise meaningfully with the project partners.
The specific tasks include: - conduct fieldwork in Nigeria, and possibly Ethiopia, along with a PACES partner.
- supervise the data collection process on migration decision-making carried out by project partners to ensure quality and timely delivery.
- support project leader and other partners in implementing the data management plan, including all stages of data collection, data cleaning and data storage.
- take a leadership role in the analysis of data on social transformation and the life course, with the aim of publishing in top-ranked journals independently and in collaboration with the project leader or other PACES partners.
- collaborate with the project leader in generating a heuristic model that presents shifts in migration decision-making at various stages of individual life trajectories and migrant journeys.
- help the project leader in carrying out the project in cooperation with the consortium. This includes helping organize PACES meetings, small-scale discussions, and seminars, such as Sounding Board events, as well as a wide variety of communication and dissemination activities.