PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] – Migration between Mexico and the U.S. is a hot topic, and a series of talks organized by PSTC Associate and Professor of Sociology David Lindstrom aimed to provide the Mexican perspective on the issue. The “Mexico-U.S. Migration: The Mexican Perspective Lecture Series,” sponsored by the Herbert H. Goldberger Lectureship, featured four talks, all presented by Mexican scholars who are migration experts, including PSTC alumna Silvia Elena Giorguli Saucedo, president of El Colegio de México.

“The current national discourse on immigration is infected with distortions and fabricated figures and claims,” Lindstrom said. “In our current world of alternative facts, the need to hear from the scientists and scholars about what is really happening on the ground is critical to the formation of informed opinions and constructive debates. The lecture series was intended to expose the Brown community to the current research findings of the top migration scholars in Mexico, and to their views of where Mexico-U.S. migration is headed in the future.”

Lindstrom noted an important development in Mexico-U.S. migration that is obscured by the current heated anti-immigrant rhetoric: “The number of Mexican migrants entering and residing in the United States has been on the decline over the past decade,” he said.

This Herbert H. Goldberger Lectureship series was co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Population Studies and Training Center, and the Department of Sociology.

Lectures:

Mexico: A New Normal? Immigration, Transit Migration, and Emigration after 2015. Agustin Escobar Latapí is director of CIESAS National (Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social – Center for Advanced Studies and Research in Social Anthropology) in Mexico City. His primary interests center on Mexican migration to and from the United States, Mexican social policy, and the evaluation of social welfare and development policy. Escobar recently completed the coordination of the Dialogue on Migration between Central and North America (2014-2016), funded by the MacArthur Foundation. The project brought together researchers from Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mexico, and the U.S. to analyze migration flows in North and Central America. Escobar is the author of multiple books and over 120 articles and book chapters on Mexican migration and other themes. 12 pm, Joukowsky Forum, 111 Thayer Street.

Children in U.S.-Mexico Migration: The 0.5 Generation. Silvia Elena Giorguli Saucedo is professor of demography and president of El Colegio de México. She was director of the Center for Demographic, Urban, and Environmental Studies at El Colegio de México and president of the Mexican Demographic Society. Giorguli was the founding editor of the demographic journal Coyuntura Demográfica, and is the author and editor of numerous books and articles on Mexico-U.S. migration. She serves on the National Council of Migration Policy of the Secretary of the Interior and the Citizen Advisory Council for Population Policy of the National Population Council. Giorguli received her PhD in Sociology from Brown University and is the 2018 recipient of the Horace Mann Medal awarded each year by Brown University to a distinguished alumnus of the Graduate School. 12 pm, PSTC Seminar Room 205, 68 Waterman Street.

Migration Flows at the Mexican Borders: New Variations inside Old Patterns. Marie-Laure Coubès is a faculty member of the Population Studies Department at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana, México. She received her PhD in demography from Paris Nanterre University. Her research focuses on employment and mobility in Mexico, particularly on the Mexico-U.S. border. From 2010 to 2018 she coordinated the Migration Survey Project in Mexico’s northern and southern borders (EMIF Norte and EMIF Sur). Her most recent book is Población y Salud en el Nuevo Escenario Fronterizo del Norte de México [Population and Health in the New Border Scenario of Northern Mexico] coedited with E. Vargas and F. Uribe. 12 pm, Joukowsky Forum, 111 Thayer Street.

New Scenarios of Mexican and Central American Migration. Jorge G. Durand is a professor at the Center for Economic Research and Training (CIDE) in Mexico City and at the University of Guadalajara. He is member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and co-founder of the Mexican Migration Project and the Latin American Migration Project, two highly influential projects that have had a lasting impact on migration studies. Durand was recently awarded the Bronislaw Malinowski Award by the Society for Applied Anthropology. 12 pm, Joukowsky Forum, 111 Thayer Street.