Research
Since 2020, we have awarded $1.9 million to 38 faculty-led projects addressing wide-ranging questions around domestic and global migration. View the published work of Migrations-funded projects.
With the support of the Migrations initiative, Cornell researchers have visited U.S. immigration detention centers, laid out landmark African migrant rights principles, and tracked anti-immigrant hate speech online. Our work to make an impact in migration studies and the real lives of populations on the move is just getting started.
Research Spotlights
Possible Landscapes: Documenting Environmental Experience in Trinidad and Tobago
Researchers Tao DuFour (Architecture, Art, and Planning) and Natalie Melas (College of Arts and Sciences) worked with documentary filmmaker Kannan Arunasalam to produce Possible Landscapes. Based on field research in Trinidad and Tobago, the project documents people's everyday experience of their environments.
More About Possible Landscapes
Displaced and Uprooted: Stories of Belonging, Central American TPS Workers' Defiant Struggle for their Right to Stay Home in the U.S.
This project explores the historical struggle of Temporary Protective Status (TPS) migrant workers for union organizing and American citizenship. Led by Patricia Campos-Medina and Ileen DeVault in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, features field interviews, timelines, photography, and video. It explores the idea of home and whether, after decades of working and contributing to America’s economy, these workers feel like they belong in America.
Refugee and Immigrant Health
An immigrant and refugee health team, led by Gunisha Kaur (Weill Cornell Medicine) and Stephen Yale-Loehr (Cornell Law School), led a multicampus collaboration to investigating how increasing immigrants’ knowledge about legal rights can help them engage with health care systems.
Their research, funded by Migrations and the Einaudi Center, is producing new digital tools to inform immigrants of their rights and increase their participation in health systems and public benefits.
Published Paper Rights 4 Health Resource
Narco-trafficking, Enforcement, and Bird Conservation in the Americas
In this study, funded by the Migrations initiative and led by Amanda Rodewald (College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Lab of Ornithology), researchers found that cocaine trafficking harms the environment and threatens habitats important to dozens of species of migratory birds.
Making Migration Research Accessible
The Migrations initiative made Cornell's expertise in multispecies migration more accessible to the community, educators, and students. Our Migrations lectures, events, and researchers are featured on the Migrations YouTube playlist.