Immigration is an interesting area now. But it is a very beaten track. To be specific you can focus on the movement of natural persons in a particular sector like manufacturing or specialty doctors - they do not have any barriers (but surveying these people might be difficult since their tariff is high). you can survey and till you find who's visa has been rejected and analyse about the factors in a descriptive way if you are not fond of quantitative else impact of immigration / refugees on electoral outcomes is another area to cover!!
I meant not immigration. There are models for measuring cultural values (WVS, Hofstede and others), and it is a very interesting area for comparative studies how them correlate with and define socio-economic development.
The popular topics are 1-export product diversification 2-export market diveraification 3-export quality upgrading 4-economic complexity. These are hot topic and will be worked may be for 20 years.