Academic Institutions

Communications Landscaping – North and Latin American Transnational Communities

- Academic Institutions-As a complement to the literature, we also did a search of the main academic institutions, study centers or projects related to migration, transnational communities and communication, in the different nations under study. We classified these institutions by geographical location and included a summary of the main activities and field of work for each one.

• Center for Migration and Development (CMD)
  The Center for Migration and Development (CMD) promotes scholarship, original research, and intellectual exchange among faculty and students with an interest in international migration and national development. Of particular interest to CMD research is the relationship between immigrant communities in the developed world and the growth and development prospects of the sending nations. Established in 1998 with a founding grant from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, the Center is part of the Department of Sociology at Princeton University from which it promotes sociological and interdisciplinary research and exchange in its topical areas.


• The Center for Immigration Studies
  The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit research organization founded in 1985. It is the nation's only think tank devoted exclusively to research and policy analysis of the economic, social, demographic, fiscal, and other impacts of immigration on the United States. Established in 1998 with a founding grant from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, the Center is part of the Department of Sociology at Princeton University from which it promotes sociological and interdisciplinary research and exchange in its topical areas.


• Migration Policy Institute
  The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think-tank in Washington, D.C. dedicated to the study of the movement of people worldwide. MPI provides analysis, development, and evaluation of migration and refugee policies at the local, national, and international levels. It aims to meet the rising demand for pragmatic and thoughtful responses to the challenges and opportunities that large-scale migration, whether voluntary or forced, presents to communities and institutions in an increasingly integrated world.


• Tomás Rivera Policy Institute
  Founded in 1985, The Tomás Rivera Policy Institute advances critical, insightful thinking on key issues affecting Latino Communities through objective, policy-relevant research, and its implications, for the betterment of the nation.The Tomás Rivera Policy Institute (TRPI), a freestanding, nonprofit, policy research organization, helps shape public policy by providing elected officials and community leaders with non-partisan research. The Institute has published 200 research reports and policy briefs addressing a wide range of topics – from immigration and education to technology and employment. TRPI is an affiliated research unit of the University of Southern California School of Policy, Planning, and Development and is associated with the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University. Through these relationships, TRPI has access to a network of nationally recognized scholars who carry out an array of broad-based research projects under the direction of TRPI's leadership.


• Transnational Communities Program Oxford University
  The Programme involves 19 projects, some within a single discipline, but most linking several. While the programme's Directorship is based in Oxford, the projects are conducted from a variety of British universities with multi-site research to be undertaken throughout the world. The Programme was planned to run until the summer of 2002, although it has been given a six month extension to disseminate findings. Both individually and collectively, the projects will broaden our understanding of the new and increasingly significant place of globe-spanning social networks in labour, business and commodity markets, political movements and cultural flows. The programme concentrates on an actor-directed view of globalisation -- ‘globalisation from below'. Present-day transnational communities are uniquely at once the products of, and catalysts for, contemporary globalisation processes. This is particularly evident in their utilisation of modes of telecommunication and transport, in their pooling of resources and patterns of investment or remittance, and in their successful exploitation of new international markets. Moreover, the social forms, political challenges, cultural resources and group identities generated by the linkage of groups in several geographical locations represent an increasingly important dimension of the shift toward new kinds of cosmopolitanism described in much work on globalisation. It is likely that transnational communities will play an ever more important role in shaping world-wide social, cultural, economic and political processes.

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