Migrant communities: Effects of demographic characteristics on place making under uncertain timelines

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How are durable communities made when populations are mobile and experience uncertain settlement timelines? How do these processes differ according to gender, ethnicity, age, and documentation status? How well are mobile communities integrated into surrounding populations under varying individual and contextual circumstances? Rates of migration are increasing, with increasing numbers of women and other historically under-represented groups increasingly joining migrant journeys. This project tackles these important questions to understand, using theory and methods from cultural anthropology, how migrants with very different personal circumstances and in different societal contexts make communities and integrate with surrounding populations. It supports under-represented scholars in STEM and trains graduate students. Its results will be disseminated widely to academic and non-academic audiences, including policy makers grappling with questions of how best to support migrant communities. The project uses theories of intersecting characteristics to investigate hypotheses surrounding the experiences of waiting and settlement among diverse migrants in different settings. Using ethnographic methods involving participant observation, interviews, and photovoice, hypotheses address 1) how the demographic characteristics of migrants affect community incorporation experiences; 2) differences in how men and women establish social support systems and access services; and 3) how experiences related to racial identity affect migrant integration in different contexts. The focus on differences in men’s and women’s social networks offers a complementary, migrant-centered approach allowing for a more nuanced understanding of variation in forms of home, kinship, and social life under precarious circumstances.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.