EMM Survey Data Playground
The Ethnic and Migrant Minorities (EMM) Survey Data Playground is a free online tool designed to make data analysis and visualization accessible to a broad range of users, including undergraduate students, journalists and wide audience who may not have advanced skills in, or access to, statistical or data analysis software. It enables users to perform basic analyses of selected cross-national quantitative surveys targeting EMM (sub)populations and to explore key results interactively online. Its overarching goal is to enhance both access to and the quality of knowledge regarding the economic, social, and political integration and/or inclusion of EMMs across Europe.
Additionally, the EMM Survey Data Playground, as a FAIR-enabling tool (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable), supports the advancement of Open Science and Open Data initiatives in EMM and migration studies.
The tool is currently available in a first beta version. This means that, currently, users can explore and analyze selected questions and variables from a limited number of surveys, including:
LOCALMULTIDEM: Multicultural Democracy and Immigrants’ Social Capital in Europe: Participation, Organisational Networks, and Public Policies at the Local Level (2004-2008)
The Data Playground is one of the key outputs of the CHIST-ERA-funded project OPENMIN, “Consolidating Open Science and Data Initiatives on Ethnic and Migrant Minorities in Europe” (2025). It has been coordinated and developed by a team based at CEE (Centre d’études europénnes et de politique comparée) of Sciences Po, led by Laura Morales, with the technical work led by Ekaterina Iakovleva.
If you have feedback or suggestions for essential improvements, please send them to ethmigsurveydata@sciencespo.fr with the subject line: “Feedback on EMM Survey Data Playground.”
Methodology
The EMM Survey Data Playground is designed as a reproducible, auditable, and computationally transparent environment, implemented in Python with a Plotly Dash interface. The underlying infrastructure enables fault-tolerant ingestion of .tab and .csv survey distributions, relying on automatic delimiter and encoding detection, schema normalization, and strict type enforcement. The pipeline incorporates modular procedures of validation and transformation, including negative-code gating, explicit missing-data handling protocols, and systematic alignment of variables with the codebook and metadata dictionary.
All visual outputs are generated through deterministic aggregation and normalization pipelines that enforce comparability across cities/countries and groups. Binary indicators are represented exclusively as yes-share distributions, supplemented by the option of a mean reference line, while multi-category variables are rendered as ordered stacked distributions with harmonized denominators.
The technical documentation and process workflows for developing the Data Playground, including detailed deployment instructions, are publicly available in the tool’s GitHub repository.
Available surveys
1. LOCALMULTIDEM (“Multicultural Democracy and Immigrants’ Social Capital in Europe”)
It is a cross-national, individual-level survey conducted between 2004 and 2008 across 11 major European cities. The survey captures the civic, political, and social lives of immigrant and native-origin individuals in 11 European cities, offering one of the richest cross-national resources on integration processes in Europe.
Morales, Laura; Anduiza, Eva; Bengtsson, Bo; Cinalli, Manlio; Diani, Mario; Giugni, Marco; Orkeny, Antal; Rogstad, Jon; Statham, Paul, 2014,”LOCALMULTIDEM and MDE Individual Survey (WP4) Dataset, 2004-2008″, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/24987, Harvard Dataverse, V5, UNF:6:yecNYygqTj8fnNh4PvSohA== [fileUNF]
Sajir, Zakaria, 2017, “Individual-level Survey – Moroccan-origin Community of Turin”, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/3MRMUR, Harvard Dataverse, V2
Links to the questionnaire
- Questionnaire (PDF, English version): Harvard Dataverse – Questionnaire file
- Full dataset and documentation: Harvard Dataverse entry
2. Civic and political integration of EMMs (subnational level)
This cross-national dataset compiles survey data on several aspects of the lives and experiences of ethnic and migrant minorities (EMMs), including associational involvement and membership; non-electoral and electoral political behaviour; political interest and knowledge; civic and political attitudes; media use and consumption; identity and belonging; social attitudes; religion and religious practices; and migration trajectories.
The dataset postharmonizes and pools the following surveys:
– LOCALMULTIDEM (2004–2008; Brussels 2009; Turin 2014)
– Immigrant Citizens Survey-ICS (2011–2012)
– The Integration of the European Second Generation – TIES (2006–2012)
– Electoral Participation of Immigrants, Canton of Geneva (2015)
– Duisburg Citizens Survey – Foreign Population (2004, 2006)
Topics:
– Associational involvement and membership
– Non-electoral and electoral political behaviour
– Political interest and knowledge
– Civic and political attitudes
– Media use and consumption
– Identity and belonging
– Social attitudes
– Religion and religious practices
– Migration trajectories
The post-harmonized survey datasets will be publicly available soon via the EMM Survey Data Self-Deposit Dataverse, developed by AUSSDA.