Estimating Bibliometric Links using Google Scholar: A Semi-Systematic Literature Mapping of Migration and Housing

TL;DR

This paper uses Google Scholar to map and analyze the literature on migration and housing, revealing growth patterns, key bridging documents, and gaps in integrative research within this interdisciplinary field.

Contribution

It introduces a semi-systematic literature mapping approach in social sciences, highlighting key documents and measuring research connectivity in migration and housing studies.

Findings

Growth of migration literature since 1960s

Identification of key bridging documents

Highlighting gaps in integrative research

Abstract

As the number of empirical studies increases unprecedentedly in line with expansions in higher education, theoretical developments in population studies suffer due to a discoverability crisis of related work. The systematic use of previous research is common in the medical sciences through various types of structured reviews. However, these are less common in the social sciences, despite their potential, especially in cross-disciplinary fields such as migration. We use Google Scholar to examine the niche of housing research within migration studies through a broad range of documents. The contribution of this meta-analysis is threefold. Firstly, we illustrate the association of keywords across the corpus of literature related to migration and housing and map the growth of migration literature since the 1960s. Secondly, we highlight key bridging documents using network measures. Finally, we estimate the distance in reading time between documents. Our findings suggest that the corpus of previous work at the intersection of migration and housing consists of many additive case studies, indicating a gap in integrative approaches replicable across a growing knowledge landscape.