research | investigaciones

ongoing research

Examining the financialization of migration and housing nexus through a multi-sited ethnography among Latin American migrants to Canada

This multi-sited 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 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. 

Ethnographic Research & Practice Lab

past research

Gota a Gota, Drop by Drop: Forced Displacement, Debt and Credit, and Life in the Aftermath of Conflict | Gota a gota, drop by drop: desplazamiento forzoso, deuda y crédito, y vida después del conflicto

Gota a Gota focused on relations of credit and debt in the lives of people internally displaced during the Colombian conflict from rural regions to cities. The monograph (in development) examines credit and debt relations through histories of paramilitarism, left-wing guerrilla insurgencies, state violence, drug trafficking and money laundering in Colombia to show how conflict-driven class reconfigurations and systematic land dispossession create the conditions for capital accumulation through credit to poor populations. In particular, it traces the emergence and expansion of what I call “narcoparacredit” as a parallel financial system that has resulted from long-standing socio-economic inequalities in Colombia, inequalities fueled by the civil conflict, Cold War politics in Latin America, and the War on Drugs.

Gota a Gota se enfoca en las relaciones de crédito y deuda en la vida de las personas desplazadas internamente durante el conflicto colombiano de las regiones rurales a las ciudades. Esta monografía examina las relaciones de crédito y deuda a través de historias de paramilitarismo, insurgencias guerrilleras de izquierda, violencia estatal, narcotráfico y lavado de dinero en Colombia. La investigación muestra cómo las reconfiguraciones de clase impulsadas por el conflicto y el despojo sistemático de tierras crean las condiciones para la acumulación de capital a través del crédito a las poblaciones pobres. En particular, rastrea la aparición y la expansión de lo que llamo “narcoparacrédito” cómo una sistema financiero paralelo que han resultado de desigualdades socioeconómicas de larga data en Colombia, desigualdades alimentadas por el conflicto civil, la política de la Guerra Fría en América Latina y la Guerra contra las Drogas.

Listen to an interview about this research by Alejandro Velasco of The Calgary Journal.

First-in-Family at Mount Royal University: An Arts-Based Action Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Project

First-in-Family at MRU was an arts-based action scholarship of teaching and learning project that will engage a group of Mount Royal University undergraduate students who are the “first-in-family” (or “first generation”) to pursue post-secondary education in a 7-session arts & dialogue program.

The primary research questions of this study were (1) What are the challenges that Mount Royal University undergraduate students who are the “first-in-family” face and what tools and supports do they, or could they, draw upon to counter these challenges? (2) How can arts-based engagement impact the experiences of students who are “first-in-family”, and amplify their visions of accessible postsecondary education? This study was funded by a Mount Royal University Mokakiiks Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Collaborate Grant and was a collaboration with Celeste Pang, Gio Dolcecore, and social artist Melanie Schambach.

The image below was created by student participants and social artist facilitator Melanie Schambach.