Migrations grants fund worldwide interdisciplinary projects

5/11/2022 By | Megan DeMint , Cornell Chronicle

Migrations: A Global Grand Challenge, part of Global Cornell, has awarded grants totaling more than $500,000 to support faculty research addressing wide-ranging questions around domestic and global migration.

Funded projects this cycle reflect the Migrations initiative’s interdisciplinary priorities of racism, dispossession and migration in the United States – supported by the Mellon Foundation’s Just Futures Initiative – and international, multispecies migration. Cornell faculty and their community partners will tell the stories of local migrant farmworkers, use documentary film to better understand climate change and dispossession, learn how migratory birds are affected by drug trafficking and more.

"We were delighted with the range and shape of the projects submitted for consideration for this year's Migrations grants," said Migrations co-chair Eric Tagliacozzo, John Stambaugh Professor of History in the College of Arts and Sciences. He and Shannon Gleeson – professor and chair of labor relations, law, and history in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations and a professor in the department of sociology – lead the initiative.

"This year's awardees continue last year's trajectory of projects in being incredibly diverse – geographically, methodologically and conceptually," Tagliacozzo said.

A research project with 2021 funding, "A Laboratory on Human Trafficking," reflects the ways these interdisciplinary collaborations benefit scholars.

"This is really an opportunity to break out of our academic silos and learn from one another," said Kristin Roebuck, assistant professor of history and Howard Milstein Faculty Fellow in A&S.

Kristin Roebuck and Tristan Ivory explain "A Laboratory on Human Trafficking."

Roebuck’s work represents the historical piece of the laboratory, which also includes contemporary perspectives on law and labor relations from partners Chantal Thomas, associate dean for academic affairs and Radice Family Professor of Law in Cornell Law School, and Tristan Ivory, assistant professor of international and comparative labor in ILR.

"The particular moment that we find ourselves in globally is one in which a number of social conditions are eroding," said Ivory. "Human trafficking will be increasing, and it’s something that policymakers and the general public need to be aware of."

The human trafficking project is featured in a recent video from Migrations.

2022 Migrations Awards

Just Futures Team Research Grants

Displaced and Uprooted: Stories of Belonging, Central American TPS Workers' Defiant Struggle for their Right to Stay Home in the U.S. ($150,000)

Patricia Campos-Medina (ILR) | Ileen DeVault (ILR) | Sol Aramendi | National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) | National TPS Alliance (NYS chapters)

Climate, Dispossession, and Natural and Built Environments ($149,000)

Natalie Melas (A&S) | Tao DuFour (College of Architecture, Art, and Planning)

Food Beyond Borders: Visions of Hunting and Fishing in the Myanmar Diaspora ($149,000)

Kathryn J. Fiorella (College of Veterinary Medicine) | T. Bruce Lauber (College of Agriculture and Life Sciences) | Jenny E. Goldstein (CALS) | Peter B. McIntyre (CALS) | Nicole Tu-Maung (CALS) | Yu Yu Myint Than (Documentary Photographer & Founding Member of Thuma Collective)