International Migration in the Americas

Undergraduate / Graduate

All the countries in the Americas have a long history as highly mobile. TheUS has been, by far and for several decades, the main magnet for international moves worldwide with more than 50 million migrants living today in the country. Canada has one of the largest proportions of foreign-born population, above 20%. Mexico is the country with the second largest stock of nationals living in another country, close to 12 million. In the cases of Jamaica and El Salvador, one of every four nationals live abroad. Central and South America have also experienced a variety of international movements related to political, environmental and economic events. The region as a whole combines documented and undocumented moves, an important flow of return migration, adult- only and family migrations, temporary-labor programs and the settlement of large communities of migrants, especially in cities. In addition, in the history of the continent one can trace rapid shifts in countries traditionally of destination to countries of origin. The case of Venezuela, where more than 7 million (20% of its population) have migrated in the last decade, illustrates well how the population in the Americas uses migration as a rapid response to economic or political shocks (Giorguli, García-Guerrero and Masferrer, 2022). This course seeks to look at the international mobility of the continent in a comprehensive way and to discuss about the management of migration and scenarios for the future.