Studying the Family-Migration-Nexus: State of Research, Knowledge Gaps, and Empirical Perspectives

This introductory chapter begins with a brief outline of key aspects of the current state of research on the family-migration-nexus, subsequently identifying key knowledge gaps. From this, we develop some more general thoughts about the kind of data are needed to fill existing research gaps, and then use the German Emigration and Remigration Panel Study (GERPS) as an example to describe a data set that already meets essential requirements for innovative research at the interface of family and migration. Finally, we provide a brief profile of German emigrants and an overview of the six empirical chapters of this volume, which clearly demonstrate the existing potential of the GERPS data for research on transnational family relationships of (German) migrants.