Jun.-Prof. Dr. Soledad Álvarez Velasco
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HCIAS Junior Professor “Migration and the Americas” Affiliation: Faculty of Chemistry and Earth Sciences, Institute of Geography
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Soledad Álvarez Velasco holds a PhD in Human Geography from King’s College London, a Master’s degree in Social Anthropology from the Universidad Iberoamericana (Mexico), and a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from the Universidad San Francisco (Quito, Ecuador).
Before joining the HCIAS in September 2021, she was a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Houston (February 2020 – August 2021).
She is a member of: the Critical Geography Collective of Ecuador, a collective of geographers, social scientists, and activists concerned with answering theoretical and practical questions about growing territorial tensions in Ecuador; of the Grupo de Trabajo (GT): Fronteras: movilidades, identidades y comercios, Latin American Council of Social Sciences; and of Colectiva Infancia, an international research network specialized in children migration across the Americas. In 2018, Colectiva Infancia, won a grant from the National Geographic Foundation to develop the bilingual multimedia project Children On The Move An Ethnographic Mosaic of the Americas.
She is member of the editorial team of the Journal Refugees and Conflict, of the Latin-American Journal Periplos, specialized on migration research and founder and co-coordinator of the transnational digital project (Im)Mobilities in the Americas and COVID-19.
Research
Soledad Álvarez Velasco’s research analyses the interrelationship between mobility, control and spatial transformations across the Americas. She focuses on the intersection between undocumented south-north transit migration, border control regimes, the formation of migratory corridors across the Americas and the migrant struggle across these transnational spaces.
Her research draws from perspectives in critical geography, critical migration and border studies, and feminist political geography. It combines a multi-scale and historical analysis with multi-sited ethnography and a digital ethnography based on a migrant centered perspective to reconstruct migrants’ spatial and temporal trajectories. Her research foregrounds the Andean Region, particularly Ecuador, as a key space for understanding the dynamics at stake in the transits of Latin American, Caribbean, African and Asian migrants to the U.S. Her work also analyzes how the externalization of U.S. border enforcement policies in South American states, together with the inconsistencies in their own national migration policies, serve a systemic global formation of selective mobility control. She also studies the irregularized movement of unaccompanied migrant children who transit through the extended corridor connecting South America with Mexico and the U.S., as well as the transnational smuggling networks operating across it, and the physical and digital infrastructures involved in facilitating that movement across migratory corridors in the continent.
Research in Progress
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Book project Mobility, Control, and the Production of Space in Ecuador (2023) to be published by Routledge, London, as part of Border Regions Series.
The book examines and answers this question: What are the dynamics at work in the production of Ecuador as a global space of undocumented migratory transits toward the U.S.? Based on historical and ethnographic research focused on the lived and digital everyday struggles of Caribbean, Middle Eastern, and African migrants, as well as Ecuadorean deportees – all undocumented migrants in transit from Ecuador to the United States – this book analyses the past and present of the production of Ecuador as a global space of transit and platform for illegalized migration arising from the unsolved tensions between human mobility and the politics of control. It also zooms in into the so- called “post-neoliberal” period of Ecuador’s “Citizen’s Revolution” government (2007-2017), when the country adopted an utterly progressive constitution in migration matters. However, as the book demonstrates in the country of alleged “universal citizenship,” the unsolved historical tension between mobility and control is far from being solved, and the effects of the U.S. externalized control regime southwards are paradoxically present reinforcing Ecuador’s condition as a global space of transit and migrant smuggling. The book contributes with an analysis of an understudied case of a global space of transit in the America.
- Mobilities, Control and Spatial Struggles across the Americas in a (post) pandemic context
Based upon the findings of the digital transnational trilingual project (Im)mobility in the Americas and COVID-19, which compares the dynamics of mobility and control across 19 countries (Canada, the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil) her research will deepen how the pandemic has brought:
- spatial and temporal interconnections between northbound and southbound migratory corridors across the Americas;
- the aftermaths of the devastation of migrants’ living conditions and the exacerbation of undocumented transits through both corridors;
- regional socio-economic and political pressure that these transits place on societies and States along both migratory corridors;
- new ways in which the U.S. externalizes its borders across the Americas;
- reinforcement of the heterogeneous Latin American migratory control regime and its damaging effects on the migrant population; and
- forms of migrant resistance and survival during crossing and waiting times in a highly hostile, racist and xenophobic environment.
Publications
Books
- Álvarez Velasco, Soledad (2016). Frontera Sur Chiapaneca: el muro humano de la violencia. Análisis de la normalización de la violencia hacia los migrantes indocumentados en tránsito [Chiapas' Southern Border: The Human Wall of Violence. An analysis of violence normalization towards undocumented migrants in transit]. Mexico: Universidad Iberoamericana de México and Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, CIESAS.
Co-authored Books
- Ceja I., Álvarez Velasco S., Berg U. D. (2021). Migración. Buenos Aires: CLASCO.
- Álvarez Velasco, Soledad and Sandra Guillot Cuéllar (2012). Entre la violencia y la invisibilidad. Análisis del proceso de migración indocumentada de la niñez y adolescencia ecuatoriana a Estados Unidos [Between Violence and Invisibility. An analysis of Ecuadorian unaccompanied children and adolescents in the migratory process to the U.S.] Quito: SENAMI.
Coordination of Special Issues
- “Corredores Migratorios en América Latina: nuevos flujos migratorios, nuevas territorialidades, nuevas restricciones” [Migratory Corridors in Latin America: new migratory flows, new territorialities, new restrictions]. Périplos: Revista De Estudos Sobre Migrações, 5(1), 2021. Co-edited by: Claudia Pedone, Bruno Miranda y Soledad Álvarez Velasco.
- “Hacia una reapropiación de la geografía crítica en América Latina” [Towards a Re-appropriation of Critical Geography for Latin America] Íconos-Revista de Ciencias Sociales, (61), 11-32, 2018. Co-edited by: Sofia Zaragocín, Melissa Moreano and Soledad Álvarez Velasco.
Scientific Articles and Literary Contributions
- Álvarez Velasco, Soledad (2021). Mobility, Control, and the Pandemic Across the Americas: First Findings of a Transnational Collective Project. Advance online publication on Journal of Latin American Geography.
- Álvarez Velasco Soledad, Pedone, Claudia & Miranda, Bruno. “Movilidades, Control y Disputa Espacial. La formación y transformación de corredores migratorios en las Américas”. Périplos: Revista De Estudos Sobre Migrações, 5(1). Co-edited by: Claudia Pedone, Bruno Miranda y Soledad Álvarez Velasco.pp. 4-28.
- Glockner, Valentina & Álvarez Velasco, Soledad (2021). “Espacios de Vida Cotidiana y el Continuum Movilidad/Inmovilidad: el protagonismo de niñxs y adolescentes migrantes en el continente americano. Un proyecto etnográfico multimedia: In Anales de Antropología. Vol. 55, No. 1, pp. 59-72.
- Álvarez Velasco, S. and Pérez, L. “Intervention – “Pandemic and (Im)Mobility in the Americas”. Antipode Online.
- Álvarez Velasco, Soledad (2020). “From Ecuador to Elsewhere: The (re)Configuration of a Transit Country”. Migration and Society. 3(1): 34-50.
- Álvarez Velasco, Soledad (2020). “Ilegalizados en Ecuador, el País de la “Ciudadanía Universal”. Sociologias, 22(55), 138- 170.
- Ruiz, Martha Cecilia y Álvarez Velasco, Soledad (2019). “Excluir para Proteger: la “guerra” contra la trata y el tráfico de migrantes y las nuevas lógicas de control migratorio en Ecuador”. Revista Estudios Sociológicos, Número 37(111).
- Álvarez Velasco, Soledad and Glockner, Valentina. (2018). Niños, Niñas y Adolescentes Migrantes y Productores del Espacio. Una aproximación a las dinámicas del corredor migratorio extendido Región Andina, Centroamérica, México y U.S. Revista Entrediversidades. 11. 37-60.
- Carvajal, S. Z., Venegas, M. M., & Álvarez Velasco, S. (2018). Hacia una Reapropiación de la Geografía Crítica en América Latina. Íconos- Revista de Ciencias Sociales, (61), 11-32.
- Stone-Cadena,Victoria and Álvarez Velasco, Soledad. (2018). “Historicizing Mobility: Coyoterismo in the Indigenous Ecuadorian Migration Industry”. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Vol 676, Issue 1, pp. 194 – 211.
- Álvarez Velasco, S. (2015). “Confronting Violence and Border Control along the Ecuador-Mexico-US Zone of Transit”. Border Criminologies. Faculty of Law, Oxford University. Available online.
- Álvarez Velasco, S (2011). “Migración Indocumentada en Tránsito: la cara oculta de los procesos migratorios contemporáneos”. Cuadernos de Trabajo. Latin American Council of Social Sciences, CLACSO No.10. Buenos Aires: CLACSO.
Book Chapters
- Álvarez Velasco, Soledad; Maribel Casas-Cortés, Sebastián Cobarruvias and Nicholas De Genova. “Prologo”. Europa/crisis: Nuevas Palabras Clave en la 'Crisis' en y de 'Europa'. Co-edited by Nicholas De Genova and Martina Tazzioli. Madrid: Editorial La Catarata.
- Álvarez Velasco, Soledad (2021). “Entre la Movilidad y el Control: la producción de una zona extendida de tránsito migratorio entre la región Andina-Centroamérica-México. En Salvador Maldonado (Editor). Soberanías en vilo. Miradas desde la seguridad ciudadana en América Latina. México: El Colegio de Michoacán, México.
- Álvarez Velasco, Soledad (2019). “Ecuador-México-US.: la producción de una zona de tránsito entre políticas de control y la autonomía de la migración”. En Cordero, B, Mezzadra, M & Varela, A.(coord.). América Latina en movimiento. Autonomía de la migración, fronteras y nuevas geografías de lucha. México: BUAP-Traficantes de Sueños: México.
- Álvarez Velasco, Soledad. (2018). “Ecuador”. Migrant Smuggling Data and Research: A global review of the emerging evidence base. Volume II. IOM, Geneva.
- Escobar García, A. & Soledad Álvarez Velasco (2013). “Family and School Reconfiguration: The Case of Ecuadorian Highland Migration to Spain”. In Cortina Jerónimo & Enrique Ochoa Reza (editors). New Perspectives on International Migration and Development (Initiative for Policy Dialogue). New York: University of Columbia Press.
- Álvarez Velasco, Soledad. (2012). “Imágenes de Violencia Contemporánea: aproximaciones a la realidad del corredor migratorio México-Estados Unidos”. En Yerko Castro (coord.), La migración y sus efectos en la cultura. México: CONACULTA.
- Álvarez Velasco, Soledad (2011). “¿Guerra en Silencio? Una aproximación etnográfica a la violencia normalizada hacia los migrantes indocumentados en tránsito por la frontera sur chiapaneca”, en Agudo Sanchíz, Alejandro y Marco Estrada Saavedra (editores), (Trans) Formaciones del Estado en los márgenes de Latinoamérica, imaginarios alternativos, aparatos inacabados y espacios transnacionales, México, El Colegio de México y Universidad Iberoamericana.