CESSDA Data Catalogue: opportunities and challenges to explore mobility and migration

The Consortium of European Social science Data Archives (CESSDA) exists since 1976 as an umbrella organisation for social science data archives across Europe, to provide a distributed and sustainable research infrastructure for high-quality social science research, sharing expertise, and providing training. Research data can be archived, curated, and distributed via the national service providers. CESSDA has developed core tools to provide seamless access to data across these repositories, including the CESSDA Data Catalogue, a multilingual catalogue that provides information (metadata) on more than 30,000 datasets. A free text search on ‘migration’ gives 1,280 hits and ‘mobility’ gives 3,392 hits in English language. Filters and advanced search can reduce and finetune the search for relevant data. Basic features are available to develop thematic archives on these topics. Technical and conceptual information will be addressed like the development of standards, vocabularies for the filters, and tools to harvest the metadata. By adding new information and implementing communication technologies, the data can be enriched and combined to meet researchers’ needs as well as to enhance the transfer of knowledge. Currently, CESSDA already runs pilots on this and collaborates with different research communities, including migration. The aspects of social mobility’ research using the CESSDA Data Catalogue will be highlighted in this chapter: the catalogue as a search tool and as a starting point for collaborative research.