Doctoral Dissertation Research: Labor Dynamics, Migration, and Intergenerational Community Networks

How do social and historical factors direct migration? This project, which trains a graduate student in methods of rigorous, empirical data collection and analysis, explores how migrants form and sustain communities through histories of connected movement. In tracking a South-South migration route, the researcher aims to ascertain the historical processes by which migrants are channeled into specific forms of labor in different places. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology in scientific methods of rigorous data collection and analysis, the project would improve scientific understanding by broadly disseminating its findings to organizations invested in formulating best practices for effective and sustainable migration policies.

Anna Reumert, under the supervision of Dr. Naor Ben-Yehoyada of Columbia University will explore what factors influence the integration or marginalization of migrant workers across an understudied migration route in the Global South. Through fieldwork with an intergenerational Sudanese migrant community in Lebanon, the project explores the processes by which identities are formed, negotiated and contested through histories of migration. The project asks what new information the experiences of this migrant population can reveal about age, gender, ethnic, and other forms of cultural identity and hierarchy. The researcher will employ a range of ethnographic data collection and analytical methods such observational research at cultural sites, interviews with migrant workers, focus groups, and life histories, to map intergenerational communal networks. The project advances anthropological and other social scientific theory related to migration and labor.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.