This article provides a detailed review of the ethnosurvey, a research methodology that has been widely applied to the study of migration for almost four decades. We focus on the application of ethnosurvey methods in Mexico and Poland, drawing on studies done in the former country since the early 1980s and in the latter since the early 1990s (including several post-2004 examples). The second case is particularly relevant for our analysis as it refers to a number of novel migration forms that have been identified in Central and Eastern Europe in the post-1989 transition period. Drawing these studies, we consider the advantages and disadvantages of the ethnosurvey as a research tool for studying international migration. Its advantages include its multilevel design, its blend of qualitative and quantitative methods, its reliance on retrospective life histories, and its multisite data collection strategy. These features yield a rich database that has enabled researchers to capture circular, irregular, short-term, and sequential movements. Its disadvantages primarily stem from its hybrid sampling strategy, which necessarily places limits on estimation and generalizability, and the technical challenges of parallel sampling in communities of both origin and destination. Here we argue that the ethnosurvey was never proposed and should not be taken as a universal methodology applicable in all circumstances. Rather it represents a specialized tool that when correctly applied under the right conditions can be extremely useful in revealing the social and economic mechanisms that underlie human mobility, thus yielding a fuller understanding of international migration's complex causes and diverse consequences in both sending and receiving societies.

中文翻译：

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重新审视民族调查：新移民，新方法？

本文详细回顾了民族调查，这是一种近四年来广泛应用于移民研究的研究方法。我们专注于在墨西哥和波兰应用民族调查方法，借鉴了墨西哥和波兰自 1980 年代初以来和波兰自 1990 年代初以来所做的研究（包括 2004 年后的几个例子）。第二个案例与我们的分析特别相关，因为它涉及到 1989 年后过渡时期在中欧和东欧发现的一些新的移民形式。通过这些研究，我们认为民族调查作为研究国际移民的研究工具的优点和缺点。它的优点包括多层次设计，定性和定量方法的结合，它对回顾性生活史的依赖，以及它的多站点数据收集策略。这些特征产生了一个丰富的数据库，使研究人员能够捕捉圆形、不规则、短期和连续运动。它的缺点主要源于其混合抽样策略，这必然会限制估计和普遍性，以及在起源和目的地社区平行抽样的技术挑战。在这里，我们认为民族调查从未被提出，不应被视为适用于所有情况的通用方法。相反，它代表了一种专门的工具，如果在适当的条件下正确应用，可以非常有用地揭示构成人类流动基础的社会和经济机制，