FILLING THE KNOWLEDGE GAP. THE EVOLUTION OF TRENDS IN ACADEMIC PAPERS FOCUSSED ON THE PHENOMENON OF IMMIGRATION
FILLING THE KNOWLEDGE GAP. THE EVOLUTION OF TRENDS IN ACADEMIC PAPERS FOCUSSED ON THE PHENOMENON OF IMMIGRATION

Summary/Abstract: This research started from Zygmunt Bauman’s paradigm, according to which, societyis rapidly changing. This fluidity, captured in the term “liquid modernity”, is asserting modificationson both general and individual levels. The phenomenon of immigration is a complex, multifaceted one,for two reasons. First, to the fact that is generated by multiple factors, such as famine, wars, economichardships and most recently even climate change. Secondly, it can be associated with multiple domainsof research both within and even outside of social sciences. Thus, immigration represents a themewhich grants the researcher a certain level of freedom, in choosing paradigms, perspectives andmethods applied in the research.Julio Cesar dos Reis and Mauro Dalle Lucca Tosi believe that by studying the trends within ascientific field, one can understand the main tendencies within a certain subject and even predict futureones. Due to the fact that it is a relatively new phenomenon, there are no papers which have analyzedthe evolution of the theme of immigration within academic articles, what are the main perspectives andparadigms. This paper provides an in-depth analysis meant to identify the ways in which academicresearch focused on immigration has evolved In the last decades. The main research method used inthis paper is document analysis. The research unit chosen for this paper was the scientific article whichincluded “immigration” as a keyword. All the scientific articles included in my research were retrievedfrom the Web of Science database.. In my analysis, I Looked at two different dimensions. On one hand,I evaluated the content of the article, looking at aspects such as: peer-reviews, study sample, flaws andlimitations within the study. I looked at key-words, to identify the main ones and to see if there was anychange within the themes with which immigration is associated. Immigration began to become popularas an academic topic starting with 2010, when there were more articles on the subject than ever before.Their number increased signifficantly once again after 2015, when the immigrant crisis occurred.Recently Immigration was associated with assimilation rather than Integration. Most researches arequantitative, focussing on Peoples attitudes. The paper will discuss these and further preliminaryfindings

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