Immigration Resource Guide: Research Institutions & Think Tanks

The Russell Sage Foundation conducts and disseminates social science research. Its research involving immigration goes beyond costs and benefits of immigration to the United States and examines how immigrants and their children are adapting to life in the United States. The website offers freely downloadable data from large-scale research surveys, downloadable reports and working papers, and charts.

The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit public policy organization dedicated to producing high-quality, independent research and practical recommendations. The website offers downloadable papers, articles, and data.

Immigration Research and Information is a source for research and statistics on immigrants and immigration in the United States. This database was first developed in 2008 by The Immigrant Learning Center, Inc. (ILC) of Malden, Massachusetts, under its Public Education Institute. The ILC collaborated with the University of Massachusetts Boston to develop this site. The website provides U.S. immigration statistics taken from recent U.S. Census data; Research studies and reports searchable by topic, U.S. states and immigrant groups; and recent news.

In the mid-1960s, President Johnson created an independent nonpartisan commission to analyze the problems facing America's cities. Today the Urban Institute collects data, conducts research, evaluates programs, offers technical assistance overseas, and educates Americans on social and economic issues, with the goal of fostering reliable public policy. The Urban Institute’s Immigration Research area offers full text research reports, briefs, data, and videos on immigration trends, characteristics, economic progress, and policy, as well as similar information on refugees, asylum seekers, and undocumented immigrants.

The Center for Comparative Immigration Studies (CCIS) at the University of California, San Diego, provides research that focuses on Mexican migration to California and comparative, cross-national and cross-regional research on international migratory movements, immigration policy, and citizenship policy. Working papers are freely available.

The Mexican Migration Project (MMP) is a binational research effort between Mexico and the United States. MMP’s goal is to gather and maintain high quality data on the characteristics and behavior of documented and undocumented Mexican migrants to the United States and to make this data available to the public for research. ALL files in the MMP website are available for public use. However, to guarantee the confidentiality of the data, users must fill out a registration form prior to downloading the files.

The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan research organization which conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research.The Pew Research Hispanic Center primary focus is on the Latino population but includes some information on other groups. The website provides reports on demography, economics, education, immigration trends and attitudes, labor, politics, and employment.

"The Latin American Migration Project (LAMP) is a multidisciplinary research effort between investigators in various countries of Latin America and the United States. LAMP is currently based at Princeton University and the University of Guadalajara." Conducts migration and immigration surveys within member counters and offers downloadable data sets of results.

“The Migration Policy Institute is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank in Washington, DC dedicated to analysis of the movement of people worldwide.” MPI's work is organized around four research topics: Migration Management, Refugee Protection and International Humanitarian Response, North American Borders and Migration Agenda, and Immigrant Settlement and Integration. Publications (reports and fact sheets are available for download. The Immigration Data Hub offers up-to-date immigration statistics, maps, and numbers for the United States and other countries. Country Profiles offers data, charts, and research.

The Migration Policy Centre at the European University Institute, Florence, conducts research on global migration to serve migration governance needs at European level and monitors migration-related policies’ impact on the wider economy and society. The websites includes full text policy briefs, research reports, and migration profiles by country and/or region.

Provides support for moving to the European Union. See also EUR-Lex for the texts of EU Directives and to Europa Summaries of EU Legislation. See eLibrary for publications and multimedia.