Migration and Mobilities Across the Americas

Migration is one of the most urgent issues describing the complex relations between the U.S., Latin America and the Caribbean. This project is interested in historicizing the geo-economic and geopolitical impact of these relations in the present and understanding how they have been determinant in the migratory dynamics across the continent. We also seek to comprehend how those relations explain growing social inequality across the continent and within cities, and how Latin Americans have recreated livelihood strategies, including survival economies and urban and cross-border care infrastructure within the US and beyond. This project emerged out of a joint collaboration between the Heidelberg Center of Ibero-American Studies (HCIAS) and the Heidelberg Center of American Studies (HCA) which aims to establish an area studies focus at Heidelberg University on the Americas.
Lecture Series
The following lectures have so far been part of the Lecture Series Migration across the Americas:
- June 2022: Cecilia Menjivar (University of California, Los Angeles) – "The Common Roots of Central American Migration, Inequalities and Violence in the Region"
- July 2022: Solange Munoz (University of Tennessee, Knoxville) – "Migration and Infrastructures of Care"
- Coming up on November 15: Paolo Boccagni (University of Trento) - “American-European Migration and the unbearable multi-sitedness of home: lessons learnt from fieldwork with Ecuadorian women in Italy”
HCIAS-Podcast
- A Critical Voice to Understand Migration in Complex Times with Cecilia Menjivar (University of California, Los Angeles), Soledad Álvarez Velasco (HCIAS) and Ulrike Gerhard (Geography Department)
- Migration and Motherhood as Infrastructures of Care with Solange Muñoz (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
Affiliated Dissertation Projects
- Dissertation project by Hamid Abud Russell on the present conditions of public transportation in the Yucatan peninsula in light of privatization and unequal development