Browsing by Subject "Migration"

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After work or study abroad: Chinese return migration and Kunming’s ‘Jia Xiang Bao’ - hometown babies.
(2012-01) Werner, Seth E.
The process of migration has long been framed as a unidirectional process comprised of arrival, settlement, citizenship and assimilation motivated by economic necessities. This dissertation moves beyond these limited views and utilizes an interdisciplinary approach to explore the process of return migration of Chinese nationals to Kunming, China. By utilizing in-depth interviews and observation to explore the motivations of a specific group of returnees to Kunming, a rapidly changing city in China's developing western region, this study has identified three insights that can contribute to a better understating of the return migration process. The first two key findings - jia xiang bao `hometown babies' and the desire to be a `big fish in a little sea' - can motivate future policy decisions that seek to attract returnees. The third, unexpected finding - xiao xiong xin or `little ambition' of younger generations - acknowledges the perceived heterogeneity among returnees. Further research and policy efforts that recognize heterogeneity by age group and other potentially important but, as yet unstudied factors will be able to develop a more nuanced understanding of the ever larger and inevitably more diverse returnee population.
Anticipating the Blocked Future": Transitions to Adulthood and Migration Aspirations in Serbia"
(2020-05) Andic, Tanja
This dissertation uses ethnographic discourse analysis and qualitative interviews to understand how young aspiring emigrants in contemporary Serbia think about the future. While the Yugoslav period was rhetorically obsessed with building a utopian socialist future, and the immediate post-2000 transition regime allowed Serbians to look towards a new “European” future, the future today appears to have lost its long-held promise of “progress.” Under the context of economic deregulation, the retraction of the welfare state, political disenchantment, and rising youth out-migration, the future instead appears “blocked” in the country. In this work, I map a ubiquitous discourse of the “blocked future” as it appears in everyday life, and emerges as a structure of feeling to cope with and process the constrained material situation Serbia’s young adults face. Focusing on aspiring emigrants who entered the workforce after the 2000 revolution, I show how discussions about emigration become a route to express political discontent in private and public spheres after formal channels for political participation have proven to be ineffective. Engaging in the core aspects of the “transition to adulthood” — the movement from education to employment, independent housing, reproduction, and the role of the state — I show how the loss of structures which once undergirded what is locally called a “normal life” make emigration appear as the most viable route to achieving these once-normative (but increasingly destandardized and protracted) markers of independence. In bringing into conversation those who already left and those who aim to leave, I likewise show how the transposition of “normality” to “organized countries” places an incredible burden on Serbia’s emigrants to maintain the image of agentic “possibility” in their lives abroad despite their individual struggles with restrictive visa regimes and precarious labor conditions.
Are millennials moving to more urbanized and transit-oriented counties?
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2018) Deka, Devajyoti
Recent studies show that two distinct narratives have emerged about the millennials’ behavior, attitudes, and preferences regarding their choice of residence and transportation. According to the optimistic narrative, by living and traveling sustainably, millennials are planting the seeds of an urban renaissance. According to the pessimistic narrative, the changes in their behavior are due to economic constraints. To examine whether the inter-county migration pattern of American millennials is consistent with the optimistic narrative, this study compares some spatial and travel characteristics of the origins and destinations of millennials (age 25-34) and older adults (age 35-64) by using data from the 2011-2015 American Community Survey and the 2010 Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics. Basic comparisons show that the destinations chosen by millennials are likely to have the characteristics that are consistent with the optimistic narrative. The push-pull regression models show that the effects of the county characteristics on migration are often significant but modest. The effects are not remarkably different for the two age groups.
Before the Sun Rises: Contesting Power and Cultivating Nations in the Colorado Beet Fields
(2017-06) Pérez, Bernadette
This dissertation analyzes how Colorado’s sugar beet industry, one of the most important agricultural industries in the American West before World War II, was built through the expansion of an exclusionary, settler colonial American nation-state and the racialization and criminalization of migrant workers. It does not look only to elites to tell this story. Through multi-sited research in U.S. and Mexican archives, it privileges the perspectives of diverse agricultural working communities. Beet workers contested and creatively appropriated hegemonic and colonial visions of nation, land, industrial modernity, gender, labor, indigeneity, and race. From rural Colorado, they shaped the improvisational nature of state power and American capitalism.
Bordered Resistance: Immigrant Health Justice, Biocitizenship, and the Racialized Criminalization of Health Care
(2019-06) Hoekstra, Erin
Bridging critical health and migration studies, this dissertation examines the health effects of racialized processes of immigrant criminalization, focusing on the organizations that provide medical care in an informal, often underground, health system. Governed by a "biopolitics of disposability" (Giroux 2006), immigrant ineligibility for health care contributes to undocumented migrants' experience as distinctly vulnerable, exploitable, and ultimately disposable. Whereas health institutions are usually figured as solutions to the violence embodied in unequal health outcomes, this dissertation argues that spaces of health are also perpetrators of structural violence. Clinics operate as de facto border checkpoints, leaving migrant patients susceptible to deportation for accessing emergency medical services. In the face of the violence of the mainstream health system, a network of humanitarian organizations provide health care to uninsured, undocumented migrants, while resisting the collusion between health and immigration enforcement. In contrast to medical humanitarianism's focus on constructions of migrant "deservingness," this dissertation argues that the concept of biocitizenship, a medicalized belonging based on common humanity, transcends dichotomies of deserving and undeserving, "good" or "bad" migrants. Biocitizenship also critiques the disentitlement and dehumanization of a biopolitics of disposability. Drawing from twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork with free clinics and humanitarian organizations across Arizona, this dissertation examines immigrant health justice (IHJ) organizations' use of humanitarianism as both a discursive strategy and a field of action. In the borderlands, IHJ organizations frame their politically-contentious work as apolitical medical care and fight for the recognition of the patient status of migrants in need of emergency first aid. In the interior, the IHJ turns its critique toward "health" itself. Employing a rights-based humanitarian discourse, activists castigate the for-profit health system as complicit with immigration enforcement, indicting it for mass structural violence. Centrally, this dissertation argues that these related but distinct discourses across the borderlands and interior amount to an insurgent humanitarianism that exposes the fatal consequences of immigrant criminalization. By claiming various biocitizenships on behalf of their patients, IHJ organizations and activists use medicalized language as the basis of a politics of visibility, highlighting the health needs and fatalities of migrants across the country.
Braving the Storm: Hurricanes and Human Migration
(2024) Opatz, Aiden
This study investigates the impact of hurricanes on human migration within the United States, leveraging year-to-year IRS data to address changes and FEMA disaster declarations. The research aims to determine whether natural disaster risks and personal experiences with such events influence migration decisions. Using a regression model similar to Mullins and Bharadwa (2021), the study measures the average impact of hurricanes on origin counties. Key variables include FEMA assistance data, county adjacency to affected areas, and various socio-economic and natural amenity factors. The findings reveal complex migration patterns, with notable influences from natural amenities, urbanization, and previous hurricane impacts. Contrary to expectations, hurricanes appear to decrease outmigration, suggesting nuanced responses to disaster risk. This work contributes to understanding how climate-related risks shape population dynamics and can inform policy on housing, infrastructure, and disaster preparedness.
The burden of privilege: navigating transnational space and migration dilemmas among Rwandan scholarship students in the U.S.
(2014-08) Baxter, Aryn Raye
This dissertation is an ethnography of the transnational education space inhabited by higher education scholarship recipients from Rwanda pursuing undergraduate degrees in the United States. It examines how this space is produced through the representational practices of actors in the U.S. and Rwanda and, in turn, constitutes the relationships, dilemmas, transformations, and representations that occur within these spaces. Employing a transnational lens, the study describes a space of opportunity as well as tension between contrasting narratives of change, national and familial priorities, and the "magical" expectations of various actors that contrast with students' lived experiences of undergraduate education in the U.S. Most centrally, it argues that navigating the diverse expectations associated with a U.S. education is a significant yet under-addressed challenge faced by scholarship students from low-income and post-conflict contexts. Understanding this burden--the burden of privilege--is its primary focus.The study demonstrates that spatial analysis offers a promising approach for illuminating the experiences of internationally mobile students and for informing the design and implementation of international higher education scholarship programs. It concludes that scholarship students would benefit from program designs that create space for open dialogue about the migration dilemmas that accompany international mobility, particularly those related to the weighty expectations of family and nation for those privileged to have received scholarships to study in the U.S. This is particularly crucial for programs involving youth from low-income and post-conflict contexts--a group for whom the burden of such a privilege is particularly pronounced.
Circulating citizenship practices: Bolivian routes of migration, hometown associations, and development.
(2012-07) Strunk, Christopher
International migration has become a widespread phenomenon across the Andes in recent decades. In Bolivia, where approximately 20 percent of the population lives abroad, long-term routes of migration have transformed cities and rural areas within the country and beyond. This dissertation examines the lives of Bolivian migrants from the Valle Alto of Cochabamba in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. Drawing on Bolivian scholars, I analyze the non-linear paths taken by migrants and the varied nature of indigenous experiences through the vertical archipelago model. Using a collaborative multi-sited ethnography of migrant organizations, I explore the circulation of money, values and practices between migrant settlement nodes and places of origin. I show that Bolivian hometown associations have adapted rural organizational practices to a suburban U.S. landscape while also transforming places in the Valle Alto. I also analyze migrant efforts to negotiate their belonging within changing citizenship regimes in Washington D.C. and Cochabamba. By playing soccer, performing folkloric dance in public spaces and constructing transnational houses and public works projects, Bolivian migrants are able to be recognized as members of communities in Cochabamba and the Washington D.C. metro area even if they are not physically present or formal members of the national polity. Finally, I analyze the decisions of migrants to stay in the Washington or return to Bolivia through the lens of gender and the family, highlighting the importance of family responsibility and fatherhood for male migrants. The case of migration from the rural municipality of Arbieto offers important insights into both the struggles and opportunities confronting migrants as they traverse international, regional and local boundaries and put down roots in multiple places. Ultimately, I argue that migrant practices are changing what it means to be a campesino (peasant) from the Valle Alto. While Bolivian migrants are using collective remittances and the intention to return to construct a reformulated rural identity based on long-distance ties and investment in the rural economy, migrant identities also have to be located within a broader understanding of belonging that takes into account the deep roots that migrants have developed in multiple communities.
Cloacal swabbing as a tool to study diet in migrating raptors using DNA metabarcoding
(2021-05) Brouellette, Lisa
While much research has gone into understanding the timing and patterns of migration, little has been done to understand the diet of raptors during migration. Most raptor dietary studies focus on the breeding season or winter, but migratory diet may be quite different due to differences in habitat type and prey availability along migration flyways. Here, we tested the efficacy of DNA metabarcoding to detect prey DNA on cloacal swabs. In 2019, we collected cloacal swabs from raptors during spring and fall migration in Duluth, MN. We analyzed 287 cloacal swabs from 11 species of raptors. We hypothesized that detection of dietary DNA on cloacal swabs would be influenced by the species of raptor swabbed, the size of the raptor, and migratory flight strategy (passive/soaring flight vs. active flight). Prey DNA was detected on 18.46% of cloacal swabs. Using a generalized linear model, we found that neither species, size, nor migratory flight strategy were better than the null model at explaining differences in detection of dietary DNA. To our knowledge, this is the first study to use cloacal swabbing and DNA metabarcoding to detect dietary DNA and our results indicate that this method has potential for further use.
Cross-Cultural Interaction and Migration: Retheorizing Greek Colonization in the 7th -4th Centuries BC with the Exchange of Attic Figured Pottery
(2018-03-29) Faulkner-Gentry, Ivy; faul0078@umn.edu; Faulkner-Gentry, Ivy
This data is part of a doctoral dissertation study on the exchange of Attic figured pottery between Greek settlers and local populations in Western Europe and the northern Black Sea in the 7th-4th centuries BC. This data compiles instances of Attic painted pottery in these regions with deposition context information as well as item descriptions and references. This data is also visualized geographically using ArcGIS Online (Esri), the results of which are shared via pdf and shapefiles. This data can be used to analyze inter- and intra-regional interaction and may form the foundation for expanded research on Greek migration in the Archaic period to other regions.
Cross-Cultural Interaction and Migration: Retheorizing Greek Colonization in the 7th-4th Centuries BC with the Exchange of Attic Figured Pottery
(2018-06) Faulkner-Gentry, Ivy
This study examines interaction between Greeks and non-Greeks in the regions of Western Europe, particularly southern France, and the northern coast of the Black Sea through an analysis of the exchange of Attic pottery vessels. This research validates the importance of material culture for understanding culture contact. Furthermore, it demonstrates how interdisciplinary frameworks are essential for this type of interpretation. Finally, this study is particularly relevant as a case for comparison to today where migration and cross-cultural interaction are a constant. Previous scholarship on the movement of Greeks beyond Greece in the Archaic period (7th-5th c. BC) has focused on models of acculturation and/or colonization. These models lack a full appreciation of the nuances of interaction and local agency. Migration as a framework changes the perception of interaction drastically from the colonial mindset by upsetting preconceived notions of power differentials and intentionality. My project looks at interaction using the deposition of Attic pottery in both Greek and non- Greek contexts in order to fully explore these nuances. Comparison of both contexts allows for greater local agency and opens up questions about our general understanding of this period of history. The conclusions of this study are that 1) colonization is not an adequate model for the interaction of the Greeks entering the regions of Western Europe and the northern coast of the Black Sea and the local populations they encountered, 2) migration is a better model for understanding the relative positions of power occupied by both parties, 3) Attic pottery was significant in among the objects exchanged between these groups as demonstrated by its depositional contexts, and 4) Attic pottery was significant not just as a trade item, but because of symbolic associations, perhaps best understood in terms of social networks or diplomacy, that were attached to this category of physical object.
Crosstalk Between Adhesion Molecules Influences Cell Traction and Migration
(2023-07) Kelly, Marcus
Cell migration is the major driver of invasion and metastasis during cancer progression. For cells to migrate, they utilize the actin-myosin cytoskeleton and adhesion molecules, such as integrins and CD44, to generate traction forces in their environment. Whereas CD44 primarily binds to hyaluronic acid (HA), integrins primarily bind to extracellular matrix proteins (ECM) such as collagen. However, the role of CD44 under integrin-mediated conditions, and vice versa, is not well known. Here we used TFM to assess the functional mechanical relationship between integrins and CD44. Performing TFM on integrin-mediated adhesion conditions, i.e., collagen, we found that CD44KO U251 cells exerted more traction force than wild-type (WT) U251 cells. When using untreated WT and CD44-blocked WT, we observed comparable results with CD44KO cells again showing an increase in traction force on collagen gels. Conversely, in CD44-mediated adhesive conditions, integrin-blocked WT cells exerted higher traction force than untreated WT cells. Our data suggests that CD44 and integrins have a mutually antagonistic relationship where one receptor represses the other’s ability to generate traction force on its cognate substrate.
Differential biophysical mechanisms driving cancer stem cell migration
(2022-01) Heussner, Rachel
Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are known to have a high capacity for tumor initiation and are likely a key player in the formation of metastases. We have previously shown that in aligned collagen constructs similar to in vivo structures indicative of disease progression, breast CSCs demonstrate enhanced directional and total motility compared to the carcinoma population as a whole (WP). Here, we show that increased motility is maintained by CSCs in diverse environments including elastic, nonaligned 2D polyacrylamide gels at various stiffness; 3D randomly oriented collagen matrices; and ectopic cerebral slices representative of common metastatic sites. The consistency of CSCs’ enhanced motility across diverse environments suggests a general shift in cell migration mechanics between well differentiated carcinoma cells and their stem-like counterparts. To further elucidate the source of differences in migration, we demonstrate that CSCs are less contractile than the carcinoma population as a whole and concomitantly produce fewer and smaller focal adhesions. This shift in CSC biophysical behavior can be tuned via contractility. The WP can be shifted to a CSC-like enhanced migratory phenotype using partial myosin II inhibition. Inversely, CSCs can be shifted to a less migratory WP-like phenotype using microtubule destabilizing drugs to increase contractility. This work begins to elucidate the mechanistic differences driving CSC migration and raises important implications regarding the potentially disparate effects of microtubule-targeting agents on the motility of different cell populations.
Differential modulation of arterial vs venous smooth muscle cell proliferation and migration by hypoxia and hypoxia inducible endothelial cell growth factors.
(2011-09) Chanakira, Alice
Despite intensive research studies, theories have yet to focus on the contribution of hypoxia to patency differences observed clinically between arterial vs. venous grafts. This study investigates the differential hypoxic response of endothelial cell (EC) derived growth factor on modulation of smooth muscle cell (SMC) proliferation and migration under hypoxia and its contribution to graft patency. Our study shows differential regulation of arterial vs. venous smooth muscle cell proliferation and migration under hypoxia. Initiation of SMC proliferation under hypoxia (<5% O2) occurred only after incubation with hypoxic endothelial cell conditioned media (H-ECM). After investigating several possible growth factors in the H-ECM that may be responsible for SMC proliferation, the greatest difference was observed in vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF-A) and platelet derived growth factor homodimer B (PDGF-BB) expression. Under hypoxia, two-fold increase in VEGF-A was observed in arterial derived SMC (A-SMC) in comparison to venous derived (V-SMC), which showed no significant change. V-SMC showed higher vascular endothelial growth factor receptor -2 (VEGFR-2) expression under hypoxia, while A-SMC had significantly lower (p<0.05) receptor expression. Incubation with VEGFR-2 neutralizing antibody / platelet derived growth factor receptor (PDGFR) antagonist in V-SMC prior to addition of H-ECM resulted in decreased proliferation. A-SMC proliferation under hypoxia did not decrease with incubation of VEGFR-2 neutralizing antibody but did decrease upon PDGFR antagonist incubation. Proliferation in A-SMC and V-SMC was regulated by an ERK1/2 dependant mechanism with V-SMC showing greater ERK1/2 expression under hypoxia upon addition of hypoxic endothelial cell conditioned media. Our work was also focused on investigating the impact of hypoxia on smooth muscle cell migration. To summarize our work, we determined that SMC migration was occurring via an autocrine and paracrine mechanism under hypoxia. Migration in V-SMC under hypoxia was regulated via VEGFR-1 since there was an induction in VEGFR-1 expression under hypoxia and migration in V-SMC decreased upon neutralization with a VEGFR-1 antibody. V-SMC migration was also regulated by PDGF-BB since there was a partial reduction in V-SMC migration under hypoxia upon neutralization with PDGF-BB antibody. Migration in A-SMC was induced more by PDGF-BB since neutralization with PDGF-BB antibody decreased A-SMC migration to basal levels. In conclusion, our studies illustrate that origin of cellular growth factors play an important role in how the pathology of a disease develops. Therefore, combination therapies focusing on the use of anti-VEGFR-1 antagonist to combat migration and anti VEGFR-2 and PDGFR â to combat proliferation, would work best to help alleviate intimal hyperplasia, a result of smooth muscle cell migration and proliferation in venous derived grafts and surgical interventions.
Distribution, migration chronology, and survival rates of Eastern Population sandhill cranes
(2014-11) Fronczak, David Leonard
The Eastern Population (EP) of greater sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis tabida; hereafter, cranes) is rapidly expanding in size and geographic range. The core of their breeding range is in Wisconsin, Michigan, and southern Ontario, Canada. Little information exists regarding the geographic extent of breeding, migration, and wintering ranges of EP cranes, or migration chronology and use of staging areas. In addition, there are no published estimates of survival rates for EP sandhill cranes. To address these information needs we trapped and deployed solar Global Positioning System (GPS) Platform Transmitting Terminals (PTTs) on 29 sandhill cranes from December 2009 through September 2011, primarily in known fall and winter concentration areas, to assess movements throughout the year. This thesis explores EP sandhill crane distribution during the breeding season and winter, migratory routes, and migration chronology (Chapter 1) and also estimates survival rates during the study period (Chapter 2). EP cranes settled on summer areas beginning mid-March in Minnesota (11%), Wisconsin (36%), Michigan (29%), and Ontario (21%). On average, PTT-tagged cranes arrived at their winter terminus beginning mid-December in Indiana (29%), Kentucky (11%), Tennessee (79%), Georgia (11%), and Florida (32%). Twenty-three marked cranes returned to their summer area's calculated mean center after a second spring migration. The average linear distance between individual estimated mean activity centers for a summer area was 1.34 km (range: 0.01 - 7.82 km). EP cranes used fall and spring migration routes similar to those previously documented. Annual survival rates (from October through September) were estimated at 0.921 (2010-2011; SE = 0.058) and 0.913 (2011-2012; SE = 0.087) using the known fates platform in Program MARK (Chapter 2).
Dynamics of Religious Ritual: Migration and Adaptation in Early Medieval Britain
(2019-08) Creager, Brooke
How do migrations impact religious practice? In early Anglo-Saxon England, the practice of post-Roman Christianity adapted after the Anglo-Saxon migration. The contemporary texts all agree that Christianity continued to be practiced into the fifth and sixth centuries but the archaeological record reflects a predominantly Anglo-Saxon culture. My research compiles the evidence for post-Roman Christian practice on the east coast of England from cemeteries and Roman churches to determine the extent of religious change after the migration. Using the case study of post-Roman religion, the themes religion, migration, and the role of the individual are used to determine how a minority religion is practiced during periods of change within a new culturally dominant society.
The effect of urbanization on the stopover ecology of neotropical migrant songbirds
(2015-04) Condon, Elisabeth Lee
I conducted spring migration point counts and vegetation surveys at 29 forest patches in the Chicago, IL metropolitan area in 2012 and 2013. The forest patch selection was designed to test the effects of patch size, distance from the Lake Michigan shoreline and degree of urbanization. I conducted exploratory analysis to search for potential relationships. Vegetation structure variables, especially understory and subcanopy composition, were important factors for many models. Bird species determined to be area sensitive in previous studies were associated with large patches during migration. While path size, distance from the shoreline and urbanization were not frequently selected for models of the entire avian community, they were important in most models of individual species. No single combination benefitted all species, indicating that maintaining a variety of conditions in the region will support a diverse avifauna.
Episode 4: U.S. History of Immigration and Deportation
(2017-03-17) Lee, Erika; Conners, Kate
As new policies relating to immigration, border enforcement, refugee resettlement, and deportation are being implemented, in this podcast we talk to the director of the Immigration History Research Center, historian Erika Lee, about the origins of U.S. immigration policy and their relevance today.
Evaluating memory CD8 T cell quantity, distribution and migration
(2016-08) Steinert, Elizabeth
Memory CD8 T cells protect against intracellular pathogens by scanning host cell surfaces, thus infection detection rates depend on memory cell number and distribution. Many cell population analyses rely on isolation from whole organs and interpretation is predicated on presumptions of near-complete cell recovery. Paradigmatically, T cell memory is parsed into central, effector, and resident subsets, ostensibly defined by immunosurveillance patterns, but in practice identified by phenotypic markers. Because isolation methods and subsequent phenotypic marker-based analyses ultimately inform models of memory T cell differentiation, protection, and vaccine translation, we tested their validity via quantitative immunofluorescence microscopy of a murine memory CD8 T cell population. We found that lymphocyte isolation fails to recover most cells and recovery is biased against certain subsets. Applying this approach to parabiotic mice we found that the overwhelming majority of memory CD8 T cells in non-lymphoid tissues are resident, rather than recirculating. Residence was not absolutely predicted by common phenotypic markers (CD103 & CD69), a finding that demonstrates heterogeneity in the resident memory population and insists that migration rather than solely phenotype be used for identification. Despite tissue-specific immune regulation, establishment of resident memory CD8 T cells was extended to male genital tract tissues, where they maintain local cytokine production in the presence of rechallenge. Our studies of male genital tract organs revealed non-canonical migration of effector CD8 T cells directly into visceral non-lymphoid tissues of recently infected mice. Together, these results provide a systematic quantification of the distribution and compartmentalization of virus-specific memory CD8 T cell subsets and highlight the relative numerical abundance of resident memory CD8 T cells, indicating that host immunosurveillance by memory CD8 T cells is conducted in a highly localized manner.
Identification and Outreach to Persons with Disabilities Memorandum to the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration
(Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, 2014-05-05) Dorsher, Patricia; Kim, Yoontaik; Krzyska, Amy; Perna, Amy; Wolfish, Jonathan

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