University / Organisation : Université Paris-Dauphine

Paper or project ? project

Title : Immigrants’ Narratives: Evidence from Facebook Expat Groups

File : Download

Abstract : This project uses text data from Facebook groups composed of expatriates in France to explore immigrants’ own narratives of integration, vulnerability, and adap- tation. In contrast to traditional survey-based approaches, it focuses on unstruc- tured posts within social support communities. We analyze more than 20,000 posts from over 60 expatriate Facebook groups, identifying country-specific lexical pat- terns, extracting implicit signals, and classifying narratives. This work contributes to the growing literature using open-ended data to study attitudes and economic behavior, and complements recent efforts to understand migration dynamics beyond quantitative metrics.