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Migration and Transient Communities Program

The Program of Excellence on Migration and Transient Communities supports LACC's efforts continue to advance the interdisciplinary study, discussion, and application of knowledge on the processes of human migration and their impact on societies across the Americas. Economic and social transformations during the last decades have placed the phenomenon of migrant populations and transient communities at the center of the most difficult challenges faced by Latin America and the Caribbean.

While most debate has focused on the social impact of Latin American immigration to the United States, the issue of migration in the hemisphere is far more complex and its effects extend beyond hemispheric borders and across the globe. Migration crisscrosses issues of labor markets, public policy, human trafficking, transnational crime, identity, exile and political refugees, displaced communities, religion, gender, economy, environmental crises, natural disasters, gangs, and others.

LACC recognizes and understands the complexity of migration and transient communities as issues that must be addressed in an multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary fashion. To that end, LACC's Migrant and Transient Communities Program of Excellence engages FIU faculty and researchers from across disciplines as well as scholars and specialists from leading and diverse organizations and institutions in countries throughout the region.

Featured programming of the LACC Migration and Transient Communities Program of Excellence includes:

Historias de los Exilios: This Spanish-language FLAC conference series highlights the experience of exiles in different Latin American countries. It focuses attention on refugee communities forced to relocate to other Latin American countries and explores how those events bolster processes of Latin American identity construction. Part of LACC's International Linkages Program.

LACC Interdisciplinary Working Group on Human Trafficking in the Americas: An outgrowth of ongoing LACC research, training and publications focused on gender-based violence in Latin America and the Caribbean and LACC's extensive network of professionals working to combat the problem, the Interdisciplinary Working Group on Human Trafficking in the Americas is comprised on FIU faculty and advanced graduate students who collaborate to identify research funding opportunities, cultivate scholarly productivity and advance debates on human trafficking in the Americas. Florida ranks third in the nation in human trafficking cases and Miami International Airport is ranked as one of the top entry points in the US for foreign human trafficking victims. In December 2013, Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office successfully prosecuted what it believes to be the first human trafficking criminal case in Florida since a new law went into effect in 2012. That Spring, LACC held its 30th J&E —Journalists & Editors Workshop— that brought together practicing journalists, law enforcement, victims’ advocates and victims from the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Texas and South Florida for concurrent workshops on how to report on domestic and sexual violence. The workshops addressed the four most pressing issues of the time: Child Sexual Abuse; Human Trafficking; Domestic Violence: Laws and Social Services; and Cyber Sex Crimes. In 2017, LACC's Graduate Student Organization, MALOKA, hosted fellow grad students from the University of Miami and Florida Atlantic University for a South Florida Student Conference on Human Trafficking.

Migration Studies: LACC core faculty affiliates are among the nation's leading scholars on Latin American and Caribbean migration. With particular depth in Cuban, Puerto Rican, Haitian, Central American and Colombian migration, FIU course offerings at both the undergraduate and graduate levels span a variety of disciplines across colleges.

LACC Interdisciplinary Affiliated Faculty Colloquium Series: This series provides an important forum for the promotion and dissemination of LACC faculty research related to migration and transient communities. Migration and transient community-related colloquia have highlighted LACC faculty research on identity and acculturation in migrant adolescents, migrant journalism and creating transnational media spaces, and recovering migration history through literature, contemporary research methods in migration and transnationalism in the Americas, Muslims in Latin America, as well as immigrant identity in anti-immigrant times.