Summer Institute in Migration Research Methods 2024
June 10 - June 12, 2024 at the University of California, Berkeley
The UC Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative hosted the Summer Institute in Migration Research Methods (SIMRM) at the University of California, Berkeley campus from June 9 - June 13, 2024. The Institute was organized and directed by Irene Bloemraad (UC Berkeley) and Jennifer Van Hook (Pennsylvania State University). Funding from the National Institutes of Health made the institute possible.
The Summer Institute in Migration Research Methods has previously provided 10 days of training in best practices and methodologies especially relevant to the study of immigration and migrant populations. It has targeted early career scholars (graduate students, postdocs, and untenured junior faculty five years from Ph.D.).
SIMRM 2024 was the last one from the NIH grant and featured a gathering of alumni. The Summer Institute also included sessions on research ethics – from data ethics to best practices for international partnerships – and professionalization.
Summer Institute 2024 Slides
Summer Institute Co-Directors
Irene Bloemraad
Irene Bloemraad, founding Director of the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative (BIMI), is also the Class of 1951 Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley, the Thomas Garden Barnes Chair of Canadian Studies, and co-director of the Boundaries, Membership and Belonging program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. In 2014, Dr. Bloemraad served as a member of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences committee reporting on the integration of immigrants into American society. Her research focuses on the incorporation of migrants into political communities and its impact on politics and understanding of membership.
Jennifer Van Hook
Jennifer Van Hook is the Roy C. Buck Professor of Sociology and Demography and Research Associate of the Population Research Institute at The Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests include the settlement and incorporation patterns of immigrants, demographics of undocumented populations, and the social, economic, and health assimilation of immigrants and their descendants in the United States. Currently, Dr. Van Hook is working on a project that uses linked U.S. Census data to better understand the assimilation process as it unfolded for Mexican immigrants across the 20th century.
Guest Instructors
Austin Kocher
Kocher is a political and legal geographer studying the theories, laws, and institutional practices behind immigration enforcement. Assistant Professor with Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), Affiliated Faculty in the Department of Geography at the Maxwell School, and Research Fellow at American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies and the Immigration Lab. The unifying thread that runs through Kocher’s research is a commitment to an ongoing interrogation and critique of immigration controls, immigrant policing, and border enforcement, as well as the development of insurgent knowledges that can resist, transform, and dismantle systems of marginalization.
Daisy Morales-Campos
Dr. Daisy Y. Morales-Campos is an Associate Professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Public Health. She is especially interested in health, culture and reproduction issues that immigrant women from Latin America and their children encounter in the U.S. She has extensive experience in the design and implementation of community-based participatory research, culturally appropriate research methods and protocols, cancer screening studies, and interventions for Hispanics utilizing a promotora model. Her research currently focuses on community-based and health system interventions to promote cancer prevention in underserved communities and in Federally Qualified Health Center settings by working with providers and health care systems with an implementation science focus.
Elizabeth Vaquera
Dr. Elizabeth Vaquera joined GW in 2016 as the inaugural Director of the Cisneros Hispanic Leadership Institute and Associate Professor of Sociology and Public Policy and Public Administration. She is also the co-founder of the Im/migrant Well-being Research Collaborative, a network of researchers, centers, and institutes working together to translate research on the lived experiences of im/migrants and their communities for impact in national policymaking. Vaquera's research focuses on vulnerable and diverse groups, particularly Latinos/as and immigrants. Her work has analyzed the character and importance of immigrant status, race, and ethnic identity in outcomes such as education, health, and emotional and social well-being. In her role as Director of the Cisneros Institute, Vaquera translates this work by creating professional development programs grounded in academic research and best practices for uplifting traditionally marginalized groups, especially Latinos.
Hamutal Bernstein
Hamutal Bernstein is a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, where she leads Urban's program on immigration. Her research focuses on the well-being and inclusion of immigrant and refugee families. She is a mixed-methods researcher, with experience in policy analysis, program monitoring and evaluation, technical assistance, multilingual qualitative and survey data collection, and qualitative and quantitative data analysis. She is a principal investigator on the Annual Survey of Refugees for the US Department of Health and Human Services and leads research on immigrant families' access to safety net supports. Before joining Urban, Bernstein was a program officer at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, managing public opinion survey research in the United States and Europe. This position followed her work on global and US migration research as a research associate at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University and as a migration consultant to international organizations.
Jae Yeon Kim
Jae Yeon Kim is a senior data scientist at the Safety Net Innovations Lab at Code for America. He is also a research fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University and the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School. Kim's research focuses on urban and local politics, identity politics, civic engagement, and policy implementation in the United States, Canada, and East Asia. Kim received his PhD in political science from UC Berkeley. His research has won several awards, including the 2022 Best Dissertation Award in Urban and Local Politics from APSA. Kim frequently collaborates with government agencies for his applied research, such as the state governments of California, New York, Colorado, and New Mexico, and the federal Office of Evaluation Sciences (OES).
John Mollenkopf
John Mollenkopf is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology and Director of the Center for Urban Research at the City University’s Graduate Center. He has authored or edited eighteen books on the comparative analysis of immigration, race, and ethnicity in urban settings in the U.S. and West Europe, including Unsettled Americans. His co-authored study of immigrant second generation and native minority young adults in metropolitan New York, Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age, received the Distinguished Book Award of the American Sociological Association. He has also worked extensively on policy evaluations for New York City agencies, most recently completing New York City Civic Engagement Surveys in 2018 and 2021 and a collaborative analysis of emerging “communities of interest” for the 2023 city council redistricting process.
Kirk Bansak
Kirk Bansak is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at UC Berkeley. His research interests are in causal inference, experimental design and analysis, refugee resettlement and asylum politics, algorithmic decision-making, and public opinion. He is the inaugural Faculty Director of the Yardi Scholarship at UC Berkeley, a faculty affiliate of the Immigration Policy Lab at Stanford University and ETH Zurich, and a faculty affiliate of the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative (BIMI). His research has appeared in Science, Nature, American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Political Analysis, Statistical Science, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A, Nature Human Behaviour, PNAS Nexus, Political Science Research and Methods, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and the ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC).
Lina Guzman
Lina Guzman, PhD, is chief strategy officer at Child Trends and director of its Hispanic Institute. In her role as Child Trends’ chief strategy officer, Dr. Guzman is responsible for increasing the organization’s impact, leading its strategic business development, and developing and executing its strategic initiatives. Dr. Guzman is a nationally recognized expert on Latino children and families whose research focuses on bringing a voice to the diversity, experiences, and strengths of our nation’s Latino communities to help improve policy and programs. As principal investigator of the National Research Center on Hispanic Children and Families (the Hispanic Center), funded by the Administration for Children and Families, Dr. Guzman oversees a research agenda that cuts across various areas of family well-being, including poverty and economic self-sufficiency, fatherhood and healthy marriage, and early care and education.
Natasha Warikoo
Natasha Warikoo is Stern Professor in the Social Sciences, Department of Sociology, at Tufts University. A former Guggenheim Fellow, Warikoo studies racial and ethnic inequality in education. Her book Race at the Top: Asian Americans and Whites in Pursuit of the American Dream in Suburban Schools (May 2022, University of Chicago Press), explores the growth of Asian Americans in suburban communities. In the book Is Affirmative Action Fair? The Myth of Equity in College Admissions Warikoo argues that we should rethink college admissions, and walks readers through empirical evidence suggesting the important value of affirmative action. Warikoo is co-chair of Scholars Strategy Network Boston, which aims to connect scholars, policymakers, and community leaders to effect change. Warikoo earned her BSc/BA in mathematics and philosophy at Brown University, and her PhD in sociology at Harvard University. She is a former high school teacher.
Rodrigo Dominguez-Villegas
Dr. Rodrigo Domínguez-Villegas is the inaugural director of research at the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute and the director of the U.S. Latino Data Hub. Prior to joining LPPI he was a consultant for the Migration Policy Institute in Washington D.C. where he conducted research on Mexico’s migration policies. Dr. Dominguez-Villegas’ research has influenced legislation in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, and his publications and policy reports have been covered in over 50 national and international media outlets including The New York Times, NPR, NBC, Reforma and El Pais.
William Lopez
William D. Lopez is a clinical assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and Faculty Associate in the Department of Latina/o Studies. His research and teaching center on racial health inequities, especially those experienced by Latinx immigrant communities in the midwest and rural United States. As a mixed-methodologist, William has used health surveys, participant observation, and semi-structured and narrative interview techniques to consider the ripple effects of immigration policies on the individuals, families, and communities that are subjected to them. His award-winning book, Separated: Family and Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Raid, documents the strain that deportation places on mixed-status families and communities in the Midwest. His forthcoming book, ICE in the Heartland, considers the impacts of and responses to large-scale immigration worksite raids that took place in the summer of 2018.