Convened by: COMPAS

Speaker: Professor Fernanda Vázquez-Vela, Department of Social Sciences, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Cuajimalpa
Time: 2pm – 3:30pm (including Q&A)

We live in a complex and irreversible process of continuous human mobility between cities; from rural to urban and vice versa; and from one country to another. The need of new opportunities, the lack of work inside their own country, the intricate job market, and the increasingly strict immigration rules in some countries, have change traditional migration destinies and have open new ones. There is a considerable amount of academic works on South Asian diaspora in United States, UK or Canada, but a lack of interest on what is happening in Latin America with these communities. Even that is a very small group, in Mexico the South Asian community has increased in recent years. We can find two groups. The first one is the professional migrant: some have been hired by Indian international companies with branches in Mexico City, or had been studying or working for Mexican universities. The second group, of greater proportions, includes mostly undocumented workers with low educational qualifications, peasants or workers, that had to stay in Mexico, because they could not make it to United States or Canada.

In order to contribute to the study of new waves of migration south-south; to make more visible their migration trajectories, and the ways of adaptation in a different linguistic and cultural society, in this presentation I will show my first approximations to the phenomenon. Using ethnographic methodology and life story method, I will talk about the migratory experience, adaptation and stigmatization of three South Asians in Mexico City, as well as the construction of networks, practices and contributions that they produce in the everyday life in the city.

This event is free and all are welcome.

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