Experts Database

I am a doctoral researcher in Politics at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. Broadly, I am interested in the politics of migration in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). More specifically, I am interested in understanding how national governments across LAC manage different forms of migration (immigration, in-transit migration, forced migration, and return migration), what factors shape their management strategies, what explains variation across national governments in the region, and how such management strategies shape the lives of migrant communities. I address such questions by employing qualitative methods.

Dr. Xóchitl C. Chávez is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Riverside Department of Music, holding the distinction of being the first tenured Chicana in the UCR department and any UC system music program. She has a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology with a designated emphasis in Latin American and Latino Studies from UC Santa Cruz, complemented by interdisciplinary training in Museum Studies, Ethnomusicology, Folklore, and Social Documentation.
As an Activist Scholar and musician, Dr. Chávez's research centers on the practices of accompaniment and sincere collaborative intention. She ethically participates in making music and dance while documenting the process of Mexican Indigenous migrants and Latinos in the United States, focusing on their cross-border efforts to maintain cultural traditions.
Dr. Chávez's forthcoming book, "La Guelaguetza: Oaxacan Migrant Festivals and the Making of Transborder Indigeneity" (University of Oxford Press, 2025), is the first transborder, multi-sited ethnography of its kind, based on over eight years of fieldwork and performance participation in Guelaguetza festivals in Oaxaca and California. Her research has garnered national recognition and support within the UC system, promoting international collaborative study.
Through her work, Dr. Chávez continues to bridge academic research with active participation in cultural practices, fostering a deeper understanding of transnational Indigenous experiences and expressions. Her research has been published in both Spanish and English in prestigious venues, including; Americas: A Hemispheric Music Journal, Desacatos: Revista De Ciencias Sociales, Yearbook for Traditional Music, and through esteemed university presses such as the University of Indiana Press, University of California Press, and University of Illinois Press.
As a co-investigator with the University of Colorado Boulder's American Music Research Center, she has secured multiple grants, including funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities for "Soundscapes of the People: A Musical Ethnography of Pueblo, Colorado." Dr. Chávez's work has been acknowledged by institutions, including the Mexican Consulate in California, the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage, the Colorado History Museum's El Pueblo History Museum, 2023 Colorado Association for Bilingual Education Board Award, and the UCR Office of International Affairs.
Most recently, Dr. Chávez has contributed her expertise as a curatorial advisor and guest curator for the Inaugural Molina Family Gallery in the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino and is currently collaborating with The Cheech Museum, further demonstrating her commitment to sharing and preserving cultural heritage.

I am a PhD researcher at the Laboratory of Anthropology of Contemporary Worlds (LAMC), Institute of Sociology, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium. I am researching ethnoracial power dynamixs in postcolonial DR Coongo through the case of Sino-Congolese intimate relationships. My previous work focused on Chinese gay student migration in France.

I am a sociologist and political scientist with the research interest in social and, speicfically, academic inequalities, European integration and emigration studies. In addition to my scientific work I am supporting Scholars at Risk at the Europa-University Flensburg and volunteer.

Dr Herbary Cheung (he/dia/เขา/佢) is a Lecturer in Gender Studies and Work Integrated Learning/Internship Coordinator at the Malaysia School of Arts and Social Sciences (SASS), Monash University. Trained as a feminist sociologist and Southeast Asianist, he believes “knowledge is co-produced in ethnographic research”. His research engages with gender and migration, family, marriage and health, intersectionality, and contextual mobility, focusing on Southeast Asia-Hong Kong connections.

Prior to her PhD studies, Fanny Christou graduated in Political Science, specialised in European Studies, with a 5-year diploma from Sciences Po, France. During the last year of her Political Science degree at Sciences Po, she also got a Master degree in Political Science with a major in Geopolitics and International Relations, from the University of Toulouse and Sciences Po Toulouse, in partnership with the Staffordshire British University, UK. After this, she obtained an additional Master degree in European and International Studies with a specialisation on International Cultural Strategies, (University of Albi, 2013-2014).

She got her doctoral degree (PhD in Geography), with a thesis entitled “The political mobilisation’s territorialisation of Palestinian diaspora in Sweden”, in December 2017 in France (co-supervision between the University of Poitiers, Migrinter, the American University of Beirut and Sciences Po Paris) financially supported by different prestigious institutions (Foundation Poitiers University, Foundation of France, the Institute of Advanced Studies in National Defence and CMES).

She has been awarded a one-year post-doctoral fellowship funded by the French Red Cross Foundation in October 2018 with a research project entitled: “Socio-cultural practices of the Palestinians in Germany in the field of social and solidarity economy: towards a new model of integration?”.

Fanny Christou is currently based at the Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS), as a post-doctoral researcher for the “Resilience in Urban Sudan” project granted by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), and co-funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development (FORMAS).

Laura Cleton is a postdoctoral researcher in return migration governance in Europe. At UNU-MERIT, she investigates the involvement of diaspora in capacity building and development through temporary return programs, facilitated by the International Organization for Migration. She investigates whether and how such programs enable the transfer of skills and knowledge to diaspora members’ countries of nationality. It not only questions what this process looks like and what (enduring) effects it has, but also challenges the underlying assumptions and discourses embedded in diaspora engagement for development.

Her dissertation entitled Deporting Children. Policy Framing, Legitimation and Intersectional Boundary Work (2022, Department of Political Science at University of Antwerp) relied on critical migration and border studies, intersectionality and interpretative policy analysis to question how the Dutch and Belgian authorities legitimize the deportation of undocumented migrant children. It argued that they do so through a conscious attempt to (re)frame the policy problem at hand, by deliberately drawing attention away from the underlying moral-political conflict and the hardships deportation poses for children. Instead, they on the one hand emphasized the diligence of their procedures and their compassionate way of working, while on the other also directing attention to the potential danger that children and their family pose to the citizenry. The dissertation complicates scholarly understanding of the workings of securitization and humanitarianism as means to legitimate migration control, and points to the crucial importance of intersectionality and interpretative policy analysis to deportation studies.

Prior to starting her postdoc and PhD, she worked as a junior lecturer in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences (University of Amsterdam) and a junior researcher in Social Geography (Utrecht University). She is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, steering board member for IMISCOE's Gender & Sexuality in Migration Research Standing Group, and acts as the secretary of the Dutch Association for Migration Research (DAMR). Her research interests include migration governance, migration policies & politics, voluntary and forced return migration, gendered & feminist approaches to migration studies, and family migration.