RESEARCH ON MIGRANT WORKERS IN THE LAST 24 YEARS: PROGRESS, FRAMEWORK, AND TRENDS

Abstract

Current research on “migrant workers” lacks a comprehensive synthesis and requires an integrated analytical approach. Therefore, this paper aims to integrate academic literature from the past two decades indexed in the three Core Collections of the Web of Science and to use CiteSpace as a visual analytics tool for analyzing the basic knowledge, interaction, status, and future research related to “migrant workers”. We establish a systematic knowledge framework based on statistical, collaboration, co-citation, and co-occurrence analyses, provide an international perspective on the topic, and suggest future research directions. Furthermore, CiteSpace’s results suggest that: (1) institutional and regional collaborations are frequent, particularly in developing countries; (2) the term is closely associated with research in the social sciences and medical fields; and (3) research topics focus on various occupation-specific groups of migrant workers. The findings suggest that future research should consider migrant workers’ job performance, public health concerns, organizational roles, relevant policies, and the application of new technologies. This paper innovatively employs CiteSpace for a multidimensional analysis of the frequency and trends of “migrant workers” in academic research. It establishes a framework to convey key information and outlines future directions for bibliometrics and sociology in an intuitive, visual, concise, and time-efficient manner.