How do online community platforms and associated offline meetings support highly skilled (re-)migration? The case of the Rückkehrerstammtisch in Istanbul

In this article we investigate online community platforms and associated offline meetings that cater to highly skilled (re-)migrants. To do so we draw on a case study of the Rückkehrerstammtisch in Istanbul, which is aimed especially at highly skilled (re-)migrants of Turkish origin, who have moved or plan to move from Germany to Turkey. The Rückkehrerstammtisch mainly consists of an online community platform on the professionally oriented social networking site Xing and regular offline community meetings in Istanbul. Based on a mixed-method case study approach using netnography and qualitative interviews, this article shows that the Rückkehrerstammtisch enables highly skilled persons of Turkish origin the access to migration related information and social networks that are often not available through their pre-existing family and friendship networks in Turkey. Our research thus contributes to the debate about social networks within the migrationprocess of highly skilled persons

Collaboration Platforms for Virtual Student Communities

Since its inception, the Internet has served as a virtual meeting place for people sharing common interests. These electronically supported interest groups are nowadays called Virtual Communities. Networked computers are used to support direct communication and indirect information exchange, and to provide awareness and matchmaking services. The use of member profiles adds a new dimension to the support of the interaction between community members. Information about the members is needed to introduce the members to each other and to empower individualized services. The paper describes the research design of two empirical platform projects, one of them carried out in Germany, the other one in German -speaking Switzerland. Both projects are targeted at students and their respective needs for information, interaction and exchange