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Latin American Diasporas conference

 

 

ABSTRACTS AND BIOGRAPHIES

 

Anastasia Bermudez: Political Transnationalism and Gender among Colombian Migrants in London
Latin Americans are among the fastest growing immigrant groups in the UK, and Colombians are the second largest group within this community.  However, little is known about this migration flow and about the experiences of Colombian men and women living in London, where most of them concentrate.  This paper offers a brief summary of what we know so far about this migrant group, and more specifically examines their transnational political practices, from a gendered perspective.  Contrary to what other studies of Colombians in the US and the UK have highlighted – i.e., the mistrust and political apathy affecting these communities – the research on which this paper is based uncovered a wide range of attitudes, activities and practices connecting these migrants politically with their home country (and other destinations).  Gender, among other factors such as social class, type of migration, previous political experience and contexts of exit and arrival help explain leves and types of transnational political participation among Colombian migrants in London.  More importantly, by using a qualitative approach and a wide definition of transnational politics, this paper brings to the fore the linkages between the Colombian diaspora and the armed conflict and search for peace in Colombia.  This research aims to contribute to a better understanding of migrants' political transnationalism and integration in the host society.
See conference paper (PDF)

 

Anastasia Bermudez is a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London, and also teaches some courses in the University of Huelva, Spain. Her research focuses on migration, politics and gender, with a focus on Latin America, and especially Colombia. She was awarded her PhD degree in 2008, with a thesis on “Political Transnationalism, Gender and Peace-building among Colombian Migrants in the UK and Spain”. Since then, she has been working on several research projects to do with the political participation of Latin American migrants in Spain. She has published a working paper based on her doctoral research, as well as several online guides on forced migration issues, including one on the Colombian refugee population in London. She is currently working on a co-edited book on the local and transnational political participation of Latin American migrants linked with a JISLAC-funded project on political mobilisation of Latin American migrants in Spain.

 

Adrian J. Bailey and Rosa Mas Giralt: Global Life Paths: Institutions and New Latin American Mobilities
This paper expands upon a critical lifecourse perspective to appreciate key features of contemporary Latin American diasporas, including secondary migration, the criminalisation of youth, and bifurcated responses to managing migration (Mas Giralt 2008). We operationalise post-structural notions that mobility practices and experiences are simultaneously and relationally produced by individual agents and institutions through the contexts of everyday life (Bryceson and Vuorela 2002, Levitt and Glick-Schiller 2004) by tracing the nature of life paths among (im)mobile Latin Americans.  To do this, we draw on recent lifecourse theory (Bailey and Boyle 2004, Kobayashi and Preston 2007, Bailey 2008, Wilson et al 2008) to examine synchronizations and negotiations between individuals and institutions, and how such repeated performances not only take place in the contexts of locales, networks, and times, but actively shape patterns of difference that define and circulate through space-time.  In contrast to prior approaches which differentiate the experience of migrants and non-migrants, economic migrants and forced migrants, outward and return migration and so forth, we trace patterns of diversity and order that characterise contemporary Latin American diaspora by cross-cutting the flows, trajectories, and becomings of life paths with the events, transitions, and disruptions that characterize spheres of work, family and social networks, and wellbeing.  Using field materials from Central America, the US, and the UK collected over the past decade, this paper focuses on how two institutions – national governments and organized religion – influence patterns of membership and notions of citizenship in ways that have material and discursive implications for lifepaths, and in ways that affect the timing and ordering of transitions through these lifepaths.  The material helps address the question – how do institutions affect contemporary Latin American diaspora – and further develops post-structural theory that problematises the disciplining role of space-time for maintaining patterns of inequality in society.

 

Adrian Bailey is Professor of Migration Studies at the University of Leeds and Adjunct Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests include transnational migration, families, childhood, and the lifecourse. His currently funded research explores the remittance strategies of Yorkshire-based Zimbabweans and the ways this deepens vulnerabilities (ESRC), and the nexus of family, migration, and religion amongst Salvadorans in Utah, USA (Matt Shumway). Ongoing collaborations (David Wilson) focused on the latino south-side in Chicago theorise the rise of parasitic economies and space-building strategies and discuss the implications for community and resistance movements.

 

Rosa Mas Giralt is a PhD candidate in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds. Her project explores the migration and settlement experiences of Latin Americans and their families living in the north of England, placing special emphasis on the accounts of children and young people.  She arrived at her present studies after obtaining MAs in Communication Studies and Gender Studies (Research), both at the University of Leeds. This interdisciplinary background has expanded her research interests to areas such as nationalism in nations without a state, citizenship and belonging, gendered migration, experiences of refugee and migrant children, international migration and transnationalism.  Recently she has delivered two conference papers based on her ongoing research, one at the RGS-IBS Annual Conference in August 2008 and another at the Generations in Flux – Interdisciplinary conference on ethnicity, integration and family ties in Helsinki in October 2008, both reflecting on the role of extended family ties and their relational context in the experiences of Colombian young people growing up in the north of England. 

 

Tania Bronstein was born in Colombia and has been living in London since 1979.  She chairs the Latin American Women’s Rights Service (LAWRS) a user-led charitable company and community development/resource organisation set up in 1983 to address immediate and long term needs of women displaced by poverty and political violence. LAWRS’ services directly benefit over 4,000 women and their dependents every year and include: information, advice, advocacy and casework support; counselling; dedicated services for survivors of violence and abuse, volunteering opportunities, ESOL classes, and employment and business support.   Tania is one of LAWRS founding members and was also active in setting up a refuge for Latin American women and children survivors of violence. Tania’s career in the UK has been in the area of community development. She has worked for statutory and independent sector agencies and currently works as free-lance consultant.  

 

Juan Camilo Cock: Transnational Practices and Ethnicity among Colombian/Latin American Migrants in London
In this paper I trace the development of a Colombian/Latin American public arena in London over the past thirty years. Following this history I will explore the tensions between transnational practices and ethnicisation in the context of contemporary migration. Colombians and Latin Americans are a relatively recent and small migrant group in the UK, largely concentrated in London and with a large proportion of migrants working in low-skilled low-paid jobs. The commercial spaces and media they have developed in London have aided the simultaneous coexistence of transnational practices and the formation of a sense of ethnicity in multicultural Britain. On the one hand, many migrants rely on them to maintain social, economic and cultural ties with their places of origin. On the other hand, they facilitate social interaction, help form a Latin American public and provide concrete expressions of a group in London. 

 

Juan Camilo Cock is a doctoral student at the Department of Geography, Queen Mary University of London. He has an anthropology degree and an MA in Anthropology of Development from the University of Sussex. Before travelling to the UK, Juan Camilo worked in Colombia as a research assistant and consultant in participatory natural resource management projects. In London he was part of the field team for the research project: ‘New Landscapes of Migration: a comparative study of mobility and transnational practices between Latin America and Europe’. His doctoral research explores the emergence of Colombian spaces in London and maps their simultaneous role as key nodes for transnational practices and as a resource in an ongoing process of ethnic incorporation of Latin Americans.

 

Angeles Escrivá: Latin American Domestic Workers Abroad: a Comparative and Policy-oriented Approach
In this presentation I will review historically the phenomenon of migrant domestic and care workers from Latin America within the continent and overseas. I will also cover and discuss the main perspectives and topics that have been raised in the literature of the last decades. For the discussion, empirical data on these migrant workers in different contexts, mainly the United States and Spain, will be provided. Finally I will approach the challenge of regulating (migrant) domestic and care work in Europe from a country and supranational-context perspective, taking Spain and the United Kingdom as different and paradigmatic case studies within the European Union.

 

Angeles Escrivá is a member of the Department of Sociology and Social Work at the University of Huelva, Spain. Her professional history is strongly linked with Latin American where she lived for several years, in Peru and the Dominican Republic.  Before taking up her current position at the University of Huelva, she worked for 3 years at the Institute of Social Studies of Andalucia (CSIC) in Córdoba.  Her doctoral thesis was on the migration of Peruvian women and their incorporation into domestic service work. Since 2002, Mª Ángeles Escrivá has belonged to the Advanced Social Studies research group.  Angeles works on issues relating to gender, families, transnational care chains and migrant domestic workers.  More recently her research has focused on migration and ageing.

 

Giaconda Herrera: New configurations of Gender and Families in the Experience of Andean Migration to Europe
This paper examines the new wave (2000) of international migration from the
Andean region to Europe, particularly Spain and Italy, stressing on the impacts of this migration in countries of origin. It focuses of the ways in which the feminization of the flux has modified or not perceptions around gender and families in countries of origin, as well as how families actually deal with remittances and care work. Through this experience I seek to reflect on the relationship between global crisis of social reproduction and the current migration of Andean Women. The first section deals with the ways in which certain social policies in origin and destination shape the trajectories of immigrant women. Then, it analyzes the way migration re-organizes social reproduction transnationally, and finally it looks at the consequences of these reconfigurations for gender orders.

 

Gioconda Herrera first studied at the Ecuadorian Catholic University in Quito (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador), after which she studied for two masters degrees at Columbia University, New York.  She then received her PhD in Sociology from Columbia University. She is currently Professor and Director of Gender Studies Program, FLACSO-Ecuador. Her research interests focus on gender, migration, and families.  In 2004-5 she had a Fulbright scholarship (New Century scholar) to research ‘Gender and transnational families: the case of Ecuadorian migrants in domestic work’. 
2007 “Mujeres ecuatorianas en el trabajo doméstico en España. Practicas y representaciones de exclusión e inclusión. En Victor Bretón, Francisco García, Antoni Jové y José Vilalta (ed.) Ciudadanía y Exclusión. Ecuador y España frente a un espejo. Madrid: Editorial Catarata.
2006 La persistencia de la desigualdad. Género, trabajo y pobreza en América Latina. (ed.) FLACSO,CONAMU, Secretaría Técnica del Frente Social.

 

Rosa Mas Giralt: Colombian migrant families in the north of England: socio-cultural “invisibility” and young people’s identity strategies
The case of Colombians is a paradigmatic example of the diversity of migration strategies which characterises the experiences of Latin Americans who live in the UK at the present time. However, not much is known of the experiences of Colombians who settle outside of London, or of their children’s lives and their degree of social inclusion. This paper draws from a wider research project which aims to deepen our understanding of the experiences of Colombian migrants and their children living in the north of England, a region where potential support networks are not as developed as in London and where shared community spaces are rare. Joining research that explores the development of new communal identities among young refugees and migrants as coping strategies when adapting to their host society (e.g. Griffiths, 2002; Sporton and Valentine, 2007), I investigate the identity strategies of relatively isolated migrant children.  The paper will explore some preliminary findings by reflecting on the potential role of the relational work that families construct and maintain with extended kin and broader communities (Bryceson & Vuorela, 2002) and its effects on the way young people negotiate their sense/s of identity and belonging, both in the private sphere of the household and in the social spaces of their host society.

 

Rosa Mas Giralt's biography

 

Cathy McIlwaine: Legal livelihoods: negotiating immigration status among Latin American migrants in London
This paper explores the ways in which immigration status affects the ways in which Latin American migrants ‘get-by’ in London.  The paper shows how immigration permeates all aspects of migrants livelihood practices regardless of whether people have regular status or not.  Drawing on qualitative research with Colombian, Ecuadorian and Bolivian migrants, the paper identifies how the ways in which people enter the country fundamentally affects their well-being in the short and long-term.  Partly drawing on Engbersen’s (2001) notion of ‘residence strategies’ that aim to reduce risk and prolong residence, the discussion outlines how both regular and irregular migrants develop ‘entry’, ‘isolation’, and ‘identity strategies’ in order to survive in London.  Focusing on migrants’ economic and social lives, the paper illustrates the hardships and range of exclusions faced by migrants as they negotiate life in London.  In this way, immigration status and exclusion are fundamentally interlinked for Latin Americans as a group, yet they also create deep-seated divisions among them especially according to nationality as well as between them and the wider British population. 
See conference paper (PDF)

 

Cathy McIlwaine is a Reader in Human Geography in the Department of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London. Her research focuses on issues of gender, poverty, violence and migration. With a focus on development issues in the Global South and especially Latin America, more recently she has been working on international migration in the UK in relation to low-paid migrant workers (Global Cities at Work) with other colleagues at Queen Mary and on Latin American migrants in London. She has published 6 co-authored and co-edited books including Geographies of Development in the 21st Century (with Sylvia Chant) (2009) Encounters with Violence in Latin America (with Caroline Moser), (2004) and Challenges and Change in Middle America (with Katie Willis) (2002) as well as a wide range of journal articles and chapters.  She is currently working on a book on Latin London (to be published by ISA) based on her most recent research on Latin American migrants in London.  She has also been working closely with the Latin American community, partly through her role as a member of the Management Committee of Carila Latin American Welfare Group between 2006-2008.

 

Caroline Moser and Jorge Ginieniewicz: Latin American Immigrants: A Transnational Asset Accumulation Framework 
This paper introduces a transnational asset accumulation framework and identifies its relevance to work on Latin American immigrants. The framework distinguishes between a transnational asset index as a conceptual and analytical approach for the diagnosis of the assets of migrants, and transnational asset accumulation policyas an operational tool for designing and implementing sustainable transnational asset accumulation interventions. The paper draws on earlier work on asset accumulation policy (see Moser 2007a; 2007b; 2008), and its use in transnational migration studies (see Orozco 2007;  Cordero-Guzman and Quiroz-Becerra 2007; Gammage 2007) to adapt this into a specific immigrant and Diaspora-relevant transnational asset accumulation framework. It focuses on both well-known tangible assets such as human, financial, natural and productive capital as well as intangible assets such as household and community social capital, as well as political capital relating to such issues as citizens’ rights, democratic development and institutional accountability. It draws on recent empirical research of Ecuadorian migrants to Barcelona and Argentineans to the same city as well as to Toronto to identify the assets that migrants bring with them, those they accumulate while abroad and finally those that are transferred back, directly or indirectly (through knowledge transfer processes), to their cities of origin. In distinguishing between the strategies of first and second generation migrants it shows how the diversity of accumulation processes is influenced by such factors as gender, class and ethnicity, as well as externalities relating to issues such as legalization processes and labor market opportunities. The paper seeks to demonstrate the added value of an asset-based conceptual approach, for both better understanding transnational migration and for developing appropriate long-term migration-relevant asset accumulation solutions.

 

Caroline Moser is Professor of Urban Development and Director of the Global Urban Research Centre at the University of Manchester.  Caroline is an urban social anthropologist /social policy specialist with more than thirty years’ experience in academic research on urban poverty and vulnerability, the informal sector, gender planning, and violence, in teaching at the New School, London School of Economics and the Development Planning Unit, and in policy-focused research at the Brookings Institution, the Overseas Development Institute and the World Bank. Her current research focuses on longitudinal asset accumulation and poverty reduction in Guayaquil, Ecuador and its implications for transnational migration, as well as on urban asset adaptation to climate change. She also does applied research on the role of women's organizations in peace processes in Colombia. Recent publications include Assets, Livelihoods and Social Policy (ed. with A. Dani) (2008) ‘Reducing Global Poverty: The Case for Asset Accumulation’ (2007);‘Latin American Urban Violence as a Development Concern: Towards a Framework for Violence Reduction’ World Development (with C. McIlwaine) (2006); and‘Encounters with Violence in Latin America’ (with C. McIlwaine) (2004). 

 

Jorge Ginieniewicz is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Global Urban Research Centre of the University of Manchester. He has a PhD in Adult Education and Community Development from the University of Toronto (2008), and a MA in Political Science from Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada (2003). Previously he had obtained two Licenciaturas from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina (one in Political Science and the other in Sociology). His current research project, supported by the Ford Foundation, examines the way in which the accumulation of civic and political assets, the interaction with other cultures, and the possibility of examining their political reality from a distance motivate migrants to engage politically and civically in both the home and host countries. He has authored a series of journal articles and co-authored a book on the civic and political learning processes that immigrants undergo as a result of their migratory experience, and the development of transnational links.            

 

Davide Però: Latin Americans’ Practices of Citizenship in the UK
Drawing on fieldwork conducted among Latin American migrants in London, this paper responds to recent calls from within anthropology for a greater disciplinary engagement with migrants’ political engagements. This is here done by juxtaposing migrants’ needs and mobilizations to the ongoing British, and to an extent European, public debate on their integration, which is characterised by a mounting neo-assimilationist and anti-multicultural wave. Starting on the assumption that migrants should have a say about their own integration in society, the paper explores the extent to which the public debate is sensitive to migrants’ own collective concerns. It is from this grounded and empirically informed perspective that subsequently the paper criticises both assimilationist and multiculturalist attitudes for their disregard for the condition of exploitation and lack of social and cultural recognition that afflicts recently arrived migrants.

 

Davide Però joined the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Nottingham in July 2006 as Lecturer in Sociology. He is co-convenor of the School’s Identity, Citizenship and Migration Centre (ICMiC) and director of the MA programme Migration and Transnationalism. Before that he was at the University of Oxford (2003-2006) as Researcher at the ESRC Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) of which he is now Research Associate. Previously Davide was Marie-Curie Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and Lecturer at the University of Bath. Currently Davide is also an active member of the European Network of Excellence on International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion (IMISCOE) and of the European Association of Social Anthropologists.   His main research interests are in the field of migration and multiculturalism, especially on issues of mobilization and participation, practices of citizenship and identity politics, civil society and ‘governance’. He has carried out ethnographic research on politics and migrants in Britain (on migrants’ mobilization and practices of citizenship), Italy (on the changing nature of ‘progressive’ identities, politics and policies in the context of migration) and Spain (on migrants’ participation in local processes of governance). Davide is currently engaged in developing an examination of the British public and policy discourses which is grounded in the lived experience of new migrants. He is also interested in developing anthropological approaches to the study of policy and is co-editing (with Cris Shore and Sue Wright) the volume Policy Worlds: Anthropology and the Anatomy of Contemporary Power (Berghahn Books). 

 

PC Juan Pimienta was born in Medellin, Colombia. He did his Bachelors and Masters degrees at University College London from 1991 to 1998. In 1996 he bought a jeep in Colombia and spent six months travelling around Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil. In 1998, he travelled to Colombia in order to do his PhD on the Amerindian tribes in the Amazon. He spent six months working with the Guahibos and Huitotos between the border of Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil.  He was kidnapped in the south of Colombia for six weeks by the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia). He lived with different Amerindian tribes (Wayuu, Guahibos, Katios and Huitotos) who had experienced expulsion from their homeland and who resisted the social realities of poverty, violence, policing, racism, and political and economic inequality. He has written a book in Spanish about his experiences in the Amazon and has also published four books of poetry in Madrid and London. The experience he gained with the Amerindian tribes gave him an invaluable insight into communities that has enabled him to appreciate different customs and values. After his experiences in the Amazon, he joined the Metropolitan Police Service. He served in the Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham for over 4 and half years. During this time he performed the duties of a uniformed patrol officer and was posted to the Borough Partnership Office. This role involved the development of close working relationships with assorted statutory and non-statutory partners in crime and disorder reduction within the borough, predominantly the Anti-Social Behaviour Unit and other agencies such as Probation, Social Services, Youth Offending Team and Housing Department of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham.  He is part of the Communities Together Strategic Engagement Team working with the Latin American, Turkish and Kurdish Communities. In his present role he set up several police surgeries that enabled the Spanish and Portuguese speaking communities to report all types of crime (members of the community asked for general crime prevention). The police surgeries have taken place on the last Saturday of each month since January 2007. Since the death of Jean Charles de Menezes he set up a channel of communication with a number of different communities in London through police surgeries. These included community consultative forums, workshops, media campaigns, meetings with LA Embassies, and businesses within UK and summer festivals within the LA community. This work intensified after the shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes and much of the engagement was focused through his work and links across boroughs. He has highlighted areas of concern, especially communication issues, which have been fed back to the Metropolitan Police Service since 2006.

 

Alejandro Portes: Divided or Convergent Loyalties: Immigrant Organizations and the Political Incorporation Process of Latin Immigrants in the United States
The lecture will present evidence from a recently completed study of patterns of social and political incorporation of Hispanic immigrants in the U.S. and the extent to which involvement in transnational and ethnic organizations accelerate or retard this process.  The study addresses recent public concerns, such as that voiced by Samuel Huntington's "Hispanic Challenge", about the possible disintegrative cultural and political influence of the growing Latin population on the basis of a survey of the largest organizations constructed by Colombian, Dominican, and Mexican immigrants in recent years.

 

Alejandro Portes is Howard Harrison and Gabrielle Snyder Beck Professor of Sociology and director of the Center for Migration and Development at Princeton University.  He has formerly taught at Johns Hopkins University, where he held the John Dewey Chair in Arts and Sciences; Duke University, and the University of Texas-Austin.  In 1997, he was elected president of the American Sociological Association and served in that capacity in 1998-99.  Born in Havana, Cuba, he came to the United States in 1960.  He was educated at the University of Havana, Catholic University of Argentina, and Creighton University.  He received his M. A. and Ph. D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Dr Portes is the author of some 220 articles and chapters on national development, international migration, Latin American and Caribbean urbanization, and economic sociology.  His books include City on the Edge – the Transformation of Miami (California 1993), co-authored with Alex Stepick and winner of the Robert Park Award for best book in urban sociology and the Anthony Leeds Award for best book in urban anthropology in 1995; and Immigrant America: A Portrait (California 1996), designated as a Centennial Publication by the University of California Press.   His current research is on the adaptation process of the immigrant second generation and the rise of transnational immigrant communities in the United States.    His most recent books, co-authored with Rubén G. Rumbaut, are Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation and Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America (California 2001).  Legacies is the winner of the 2002 Distinguished Scholarship Award from the American Sociological Association and of the 2002 W. I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki Award for best book from the International Migration Section of ASA.

 

Katie Wright: The Well-Being of Peruvian Migrants in London

This article provides a wellbeing analysis of international migration by inductively analysing perceived obstacles or blocks to achieving wellbeing amongst a sample of 50 Peruvian migrants based in London. It explores how people construct their wellbeing in different cultural settings and adapt as they move between different societal contexts and systems of meaning. Adopting a wellbeing perspective has considerable advantages for understanding the phenomenon of international migration. At the same time it affirms key elements in our understanding of wellbeing through post hoc identification of four major obstacles to improved wellbeing: loss of autonomy, enjoyment, relatedness and social status.
See conference paper (PDF)

 

Katie Wright is Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of Economics and International Development at the University of Bath. Her research focuses on wellbeing approaches in developing countries, international migration, gender, microfinance and social impact assessment. Other areas include research methodologies, communicating at the research/practice interface and analyzing shifts in the global aid architecture. As part of an ESRC grant (2005-7) to conduct research on migrant wellbeing, she focused on the construction of wellbeing amongst Latin American migrants to UK and Spain. She has published one co-authored book and a range of journal articles. Her latest publications focus on understanding how concepts and achievement of wellbeing are informed and transformed by the migration process, both for migrants and their families in Latin America. She has also conducted a range of consultancies for DFID, Amnesty International, the International Federation of the Red Cross and the Ford Foundation.