Inaugural conference of the Population Research Center (PRC) at Uni Zurich

The recently founded Population Research Center (PRC) at the University of Zurich organised an inaugural conference, inviting population scientists across disciplines.

These were an inspiring two days. I’m always surprised by the constructive feedback, lively discussions and exchange at interdisciplinary conferences.

I took the chance to talk about an ongoing research project of Philippe Wanner (Université de Genève), Didier Ruedin (Université de Neuchâtel) and myself, in which we investigate whether unmet migration expectations increase the chance that immigrants leave the country to which they have just immigrated.

We created an original panel data set by linking Swiss survey data with Swiss admin data. This way, we connected individual-level information of immigrants with registry information on their whereabouts after they have dropped out of the survey. This project takes a behavioural perspective on the integration paradox and investigates whether disappointment about life abroad not only weaken immigrants’ emotional bonds to their destination country but also actually make them leave. Your hunch? Have a look at the findings here.

I already presented this project at last year’s ECSR in Barcelona. However, I took the time in-between the conferences to update the manuscript and the talk. I would like to thank all participants for great feedback. Can’t wait until the first full draft of the paper.