Socioecologies & Economies of Migration
A collective of Latin American-born Canadian researchers, artists, and activists examining Latin American migration to Canada through interdisciplinary research-action grounded in social justice.
Co-founded by Columba González-Duarte and Gloria C. Pérez-Rivera.
Latin American-born Canadian collaborators working across disciplines and communities.
Art operates as a mode of knowledge transfer, dialogue, and co-design.
Indebtedness, displacement, environmental racism, and South–North mobility.
Research with, not only about
The collective describes its work as an interdisciplinary research-action method guided by social justice. Rather than separating research from knowledge mobilization, it uses art to build conversations around questions identified with the communities involved.
The name Socioecologies & Economies of Migration signals the project's effort to hold social, economic, and environmental relations together rather than treating migration as a single-issue phenomenon.
Indebtedness
How financial relations accompany migration, work, and settlement.
Displacement
How mobility is shaped by histories of uneven development, conflict, and precarious livelihoods.
Environmental racism
How environmental inequality and social difference become entangled with mobility and place.
Decolonial approaches to migration
Hosted by Mount Royal University faculty, the 2024 arts-and-dialogue workshop brought students into four online sessions combining guest presentations, migration research, and social arts. Participants then contributed to a collective digital mural and an online archive of individual works.
Melanie Schambach
Celeste Pang · Mount Royal University
George Mantzios · remediations of refugee displacement in austerity Greece
Gloria C. Pérez-Rivera · the rise of Mexican migration to Canada
Connection, transformation, ecology
The participant gallery extends the collective mural into individual works and short artist statements. Across the archive, participants reflect on connection and disconnection, transformation, ecological care, home, social anxiety, hope, and the possibility of seeing the world through multiple perspectives.
The online exhibit preserves these contributions as part of the workshop's research-action record rather than reducing them to illustrations of a predetermined argument.
View the 2024 participant galleryBuilding the collective through study
The collective's first summer course brought together undergraduate and master's students, activists, scholars, and artists interested in Latin American migrations to Canada. The four-day course emphasized conversation, art-based learning, knowledge sharing, research-action project development, and network-building across disciplines and communities.
The 2021 course was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Mount Saint Vincent University.
