Migrants and Social Mobility
FACULTY SUPERVISOR:
PROJECT AND POSITION DESCRIPTION:
The goal of this project is to understand the interaction between migration, social mobility and human capital formation, and their role on economic development across the Americas.
The first project involves historical migration to the Americas. With the help of an NSF grant, we are building a comprehensive database linking (voluntary) migrants from Spain and slaves (involuntary migrants) from Africa to the Americas since the Conquest in 1492 until today. We will then link those migrants to historical censuses in Latin America and the US in the 19th and 20th centuries. By tracking immigrant flows to the new territories in Spanish America, we will estimate the human capital brought by all migrants and their migration networks in Spain and in the Americas.
The second project involves the role of race and gender on migration and social mobility within the US. We will use recently assembled datasets that can track matrilineal family histories to assess the role of race and gender on social mobility and migration within the US. Specifically, we will be looking at black migration out of the US South and migration from Puerto Rico to the US mainland.
The pre-doctoral fellow will work with our existing datasets and will link them to other sources. She would also engage with the state-of-the-art econometric methods on migration, linking, and social mobility.
REQUISITE SKILLS AND QUALIFICATIONS:
The ideal candidate should have a combination of a quantitative background and programming skills, as well as an interest on social issues, particularly on race, gender, and discrimination. In particular
1. Experience programming in R or similar language and working with large datasets. Experience with regular expressions is desired but nor required.
2. Interest on social issues such as migration, discrimination, and social mobility.
3. Knowledge of Spanish and English. Many of the sources are in either language. Being fluent in both languages would help to perform the linking of names.