Migration aspirations and crises in redditors' trajectories: a case of data extraction using local large language models

In the contemporary landscape of global mobility, understanding how personal life trajectories are shaped by migration decisions has become increasingly crucial (Akhila Chakshu & Rituparna, 2024; Soto Nishimura & Czaika, 2024). This research focuses on exploring how life-course events impact the migration intention of individuals who express a desire to move to Switzerland, using mixed-method longitudinal analysis and leveraging data from Reddit as a primary source and large language models as data extraction strategy. Using the subreddit r/AskSwitzerland, I aim to capture nuanced narratives that might otherwise be overlooked in traditional survey-based studies. Reddit provides an invaluable platform for longitudinal analysis, enabling researchers to track individuals’ migration journeys over extended periods and offering insights into how personal circumstances evolve alongside shifting social, economic, and political contexts. A particularly significant focus is the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic as a major crisis event. The non-official API (PullPush) facilitates the collection of the study’s dataset spanning from January 2018 to March 2022. By collecting and analyzing user profiles and posts from two years before and after the declared relocation decision (until March 2020), I aim to map out the temporal progression of migration intentions. One significant innovation is the use of large language models for sophisticated data extraction which allows researchers to infer demographic information and life-course events from users’ posts. This mixed-method longitudinal approach is divided into two phases. First, a quantitative analysis using a multilevel model will be conducted to identify the factors influencing the decision to migrate initially, and subsequently, whether an event like the COVID-19 pandemic has an impact on the willingness to migrate. Second, a qualitative analysis will be performed on individuals whose intention to migrate was halted by COVID-19 to gain further insights into their reasons.