Tracing origins: Comparing a heuristic, machine learning, and a large language model for migrant identification

Migration has become a defining feature of contemporary societies and digital economies. Migration significantly reshapes the global digital economy, yet the lack of explicit country-of-origin data in digital records hinders large-scale quantitative research. This study addresses this methodological gap by systematically evaluating and comparing three computational approaches for inferring migrant origins from social networking data: a rule-based heuristic, supervised machine learning, and a large language model. Drawing on a validated dataset of LinkedIn profiles enriched with external geographic and linguistic sources, we assess performance across 80 countries of origin. Our results demonstrate that a transparent, theoretically grounded rule-based heuristic outperforms both machine learning and large language model approaches. We find that inference robustness improves substantially when integrating multiple profile attributes—namely, education, native language, and work history—rather than relying solely on name-based cues. To demonstrate the practical scalability of the heuristic, we applied it to a dataset of 5479 IT-related startup founders in Germany, with results indicating comparatively higher migrant participation in IT-related startups than in the wider German startup landscape. Beyond its methodological contributions, this study conceptualizes country of origin as a vital construct for information systems research, offering a validated framework for studying diversity, global knowledge flows, and digital entrepreneurship. • Conceptualizes country of origin as a construct in information systems research • Compares country-of-origin inference across three computational methods • Shows the rule-based heuristic outperforms machine learning and a large language model • Reveals multi-feature profiles improve inference beyond name-based cues • Applies approach using LinkedIn data from IT-related startup founders in Germany