Ahmed’s Journey from Syria to Turkey via Lebanon and Egypt
A family man zig-zags across income streams, kinship ties, banks and modes of money transfer.
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Countries of Research
A Shot of Whiskey
Afghanistan to Greece – fleeing the Taliban and unsafe conditions, a family embarks on a journey to reach Germany. Along
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A nearly blind mother of three leaves Cameroon to travel alone through South and Mesoamerica in hopes of reaching the
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The Other Migration, Part 1: Who and Why
As countries across the globe crack down on immigration, migrants and refugees are forced to uncover new travel routes in search of safety and stability. The Other Migration examines the journey of migrants from Africa and Asia as they travel across the world to South America and up through Central America. Part one of this three-part series examines who is traveling on this migration route and why.
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The Other Migration, Part 2: Journey Through the Darién Gap
Migrants and refugees who have fled to South America may attempt to travel up through Central America in search of safety and stability in the US or Canada. This journey involves crossing one of the world’s most dangerous jungles: The Darién Gap, along the border of Colombia and Panama. In part two of this three-part series, learn about this perilous leg of the migration journey.
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The Other Migration, Part 3: Financial Journey of Refugees
Money can reveal new and important aspects of the migration journey. In part three of this three-part series, learn what finances can tell us as migrants and refugees save, spend, and try to maintain money traveling from around the world, to South America, and up through Central America in a perilous migration route.
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Financial Journey of Refugees in the Mediterranean
What can money reveal about the experience of migration? This video, created by Charlie Bentley, highlights the groundbreaking research of Kim Wilson and Roxani Krystalli, using finance as a lens to understand migration journeys throughout the Mediterranean.
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How to Achieve the American Dream on an Immigrant’s Income
By Jeffrey Ashe, Kim Wilson.
The American Dream—being able to earn a good living, buy a home, send children to school, and build a life in the United States regardless of social stature or place of birth—is an aspiration for most who immigrate to the United States. While new immigrants may be fleeing violence, poverty, and persecution—so called “push factors”—they are also pulled by the prospects of a better life for themselves and their children. Some immigrants arrive in the United States wealthy, educated, and fluent in English. These case studies focus on immigrants who may arrive with a few dollars in their pocket, struggle with English, and sometimes are without legal documents. Our research examines how immigrant households save up in groups to transform income that is irregular, uncertain, and low into regular, predictable, and meaningful sums of cash.
Retaining, Changing, and Surrendering Hegemonic Masculinities
By Subin Mulmi, under the supervision of Kim Wilson. Transatlantic migration from South Asia is a long, arduous, and expensive journey but each year many South Asians risk their lives to reach the supposed dreamland of the United States. A large majority of the South Asians that I met during our re-search in 2018 in Costa Rica were men, prompting a focus on how men experienced long-distance migration.
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The Ties that Bind (or Not): Social Networks Among Extra-Continental Migrants
By Heather Kunin, under the supervision of Kim Wilson. Social networks have long been recognized as playing a pivotal role within migration, with multiple studies examining, among other phenomena, the role of social networks in predicting the decision to migrate and choice of destination, as well as in impacting migrants’ chances for integration. Social network analysis (SNA) is a methodology for visualizing and interrogating relationships among actors and is highly applicable to a field where social networks are considered “one of the fundamentals of the migration process.” Until recently, this discipline has been woefully underutilized within migration studies, although this is beginning to change.
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