Examining the financialization of migration and housing nexus through a multi-sited ethnography among Latin American migrants to Canada
Dr. Pérez-Rivera’s current ethnographic study explores the nexus between the financialization of migration and the financialization of housing by examining the credit and debt practices Latin American migrants engage in to fund their migration journeys and their settlement in Canadian cities with high housing costs. It is funded by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant.
The multi-sited study focuses on Latin American migrants who have arrived in Canada from the United States and Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and/or El Salvador since 2016 (the start of the first Donald Trump presidency) and are living and working in Calgary or the Greater Toronto Area. The study asks: (1) What are the distinct relations of debt and credit that Latin American migrants have established to finance their migration and settlement?; (2) How does the financialization of migration intersect with the financialization of housing to impact where migrants in precarious financial situations live and find work? This research will create insights into how different credit and debt relations enable transnational migration and how migration and settlement are forms of capital accumulation through the financialization of economically marginalized populations.
First-in-Family at Mount Royal University: An Arts-Based Action Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SoTL) Project
This project engaged a group of MRU students who were first-in-family to attend post-secondary education in a series of seven arts & dialogue sessions through Fall 2025. Co-facilitated by multi-disciplinary faculty investigators (Gloria Pérez-Rivera, Celeste Pang, Gio Dolcecore) and a social artist (Melanie Schambach), these sessions prompted students to reflect on their pathways to postsecondary education, their networks of support, and joys and challenges of their experiences. Fully participatory, the sessions positioned students as co-creators as they shaped conversations, engaged in reflective and imaginative art-making, and co-created a digital mural representing their experiences of and imaginings for first-in-family student experience. This multi-modal project also included a qualitative research training component for student co-creators.
The mural below was created by Melanie Schambach from student co-creators conversations and artistic work.
Socioecologies & Economies of Migration
Socioecologies & Economies of Migration is a collective of Latin American-born Canadian researchers, artists, and activists working together to examine Latin American migration to Canada. We seek to address South-North human mobility through an interdisciplinary research-action method guided by principles of social justice. Using art as a knowledge transfer method, we mobilize our convergent interests in indebtedness, displacement and environmental racism to co-design meaningful research identified by the communities we work with. Socioecologies & Economies of Migration was co-founded in 2020 by Columba González-Duarte and Gloria C. Pérez-Rivera.
2024 Workshop
In 2024 our arts & dialogue workshop was hosted by Mount Royal University faculty, and explored decolonial approaches to understanding migration and migration experiences. Students participated in four online sessions featuring special guest presenters and social arts, and co-create a collective digital mural.
Session 1: The Decolonizing Power of Collective Art Across Border, Melanie Schambach
Session 2: LGBTQ+ Migrations, Dr. Celeste Pang, Mount Royal University
Session 3: Stranded in Arrival: Remediations of Refugee Displacement in Austerity Greece, Dr. George Mantzios, Program Co-Director, Pelion Summer Lab for Cultural Theory and Experimental Humanities
Session 4: Workers Needed: The Rise of Mexican Migration to Canada, Gloria C. Pérez-Rivera, Mount Royal University
2021 Workshop
In August 2021, we hosted our first summer course for undergraduate and masters’ students, activists, scholars, and artists interested in Latin American migrations to Canada. This 4-day workshop was a space for sharing knowledge, developing research-action projects, and building networks across disciplines and communities. It was a multi-model, conversational, art-based learning approach facilitated by scholars, migrant justice organizers, and artists. It was funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and Mount Saint Vincent University.
Art piece created by 2021 course participants. Facilitated and edited by Melanie Schambach.
Ethnographic Research & Practice Lab 