February

Symposium

Measuring Migration in Latin America: Leveraging digital traces, registers, censuses, and surveys

Organizer: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) Programa de Población -- Facultad de Ciencias Sociales (Universidad de la República) Facultad de Ingeniería (Universidad de la República) Comisión Sectorial de Investigación Científica (CSIC, Universidad de la República) Agencia Nacional de Investigación e Innovación (ANII)
Location: Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la República (Montevideo, Uruguay), February 25–26, 2025

Confirmed speakers:

This two-day symposium aims to promote lively exchange and collaboration among interdisciplinary scientists (from data science, demography, sociology, geography, migration studies, and more) with an interest in measuring and understanding migration processes using or combining emerging and established data sources. We especially welcome submissions that combine a broad set of data (digital and traditional) and methods, with a geographic focus on Latin America and other regions of the Global South.

Some relevant topics include, but are not limited to, the following ones:

Estimation, nowcasting, and forecasting of migrant stocks and migration flows
Assessment of biases in web and social media and other digital trace data to examine migration
Sociodemographic characteristics of international and internal migrants
Social inclusion, assimilation, and integration of international migrants
Web and social media platforms as recruitment and sampling tools in migrant surveys
Experiments regarding the decision-making process in the context of international and internal migration
Attitudes towards immigration
Digital ethnographies of people on the move
Analyses of high-skilled and scholarly migration

This symposium will also serve as an opportunity to celebrate the completion of a five-year collaboration between the Department of Digital and Computational Demography of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research and the Programa de Población of the Universidad de la República, as well as the launch of the R+D Group on Human Mobility and Digital Demography of the Universidad de la República.

Program

FEBRUARY 25th

8:30 - 9:30 Welcome and Introduction
[Language of the session: Spanish]
Victoria Prieto, Programa de Población, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, UDELAR
Carmen Midaglia, Dean of the Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, UDELAR Pablo Ezzati, Dean of the Facultad de Ingeniería, UDELAR
Tobías Renghart, Research Policy and External Relations Department, Max Planck Society,
Ana Vásquez, Agencia Nacional de Investigación e Innovación
Virginia Bertolotti, Research Provost, UDELAR

9:30 - 10:00 Coffee break

10:00 - 11:00 Session I Invited speakers:
Recent trends, analytical focus, and data demands in the assessment of international migration in Latin America [Language of the session: English and Spanish]
Victoria Prieto (Chair)

Las tendencias recientes de la migración internacional en América Latina y el Caribe [Presentation in Spanish] Julieta Bengochea
Bridging data, concepts, and theories for understanding migration dynamics in the Americas [Presentation in English] Claudia Masferrer

11:00 - 12:30 Session I Contributed papers:
Survey data sources to study migration [Language of the session: English and Spanish]
Julieta Bengochea (Chair)

Going back to basic: Migration estimates from the Mexican Labor Force Survey [Presentation in English] Andrea Miranda Gonzalez
Recent Migration: A profile reported by Venezuelan Households in the Living Conditions Survey (ENCOVI) [Presentation in Spanish] Constanza Lydee Armas Acosta
La Patria Grande? Anti-immigrant attitudes in Latin America [Presentation in English] Marcela Cerrutti

12:30 - 14:00 Lunch break

14:00 - 15:30 Session II Contributed papers:
Digital trace data sources to study migration [Language of the session: English]
Carolina Coimbra (Chair)

Patterns in migration coverage: examining large-scale media trends across Latin America and the Caribbean [Presentation in English] Eynel Pilatowsky
Detecting trends in the sociodemographic composition of Venezuelan migrants in Colombia using digital trace data [Presentation in English] Jackson Mason-Mackay
Gender and regional differences in internal and international migration of scholars [Presentation in English] Thiago Zordan Malaguth

15:30 - 16:00 Coffee break

16:00 - 17:00 Session II Invited speakers:
New data sources in the assessment of international and internal migration [Language of the session: English]
Carolina Coimbra (Chair)

Leveraging digital data streams for human mobility and migration research: Current landscape, opportunities, and challenges [Presentation in English] Francisco Rowe
Making sense of non-representative data for migration research [Presentation in English] Emilio Zagheni

FEBRUARY 26th

9:00 - 10:00 Session III Invited speakers:
Leveraging register, census, and survey data in assessing international and internal migration [Language of the session: English and Spanish]
Victoria Prieto (Chair)

Fuentes de datos para medir y analizar la migración interna en América Latina y patrones y tendencias clave según censos de población [Presentation in Spanish] Jorge Rodríguez
The Human Migration Database (HMigD) [Presentation in English] Maciej Danko

10:00 - 10:30 Coffee break

10:30 - 12:00 Session III Contributed papers:
Administrative and census data to study migration [Language of the session: English]
Emilio Zagheni (Chair)

Measuring internal and international migration flows in Brazil from the implicit data within the official population projections to migration estimates [Presentation in English] Cesar Marques
Complementary administrative data for the understanding of international migration, dual nationality and naturalization in Mexico [Presentation in English] Víctor M. García-Guerrero
Using genealogical data to measure migration and inter-ethnic marriage in Latin America: evidence from Uruguay [Presentation in English] Joseph Price

12:00 - 13:00 Session IV Invited speakers:
Assessing culture, migration, and climate change leveraging digital data sources [Language of the session: English]
Victoria Prieto (Chair)

The value of cultural similarity for predicting migration: evidence from food and drink interests in digital trace data [Presentation in English] Carolina Coimbra Vieira
Climate change and migration: leveraging novel data to understand a complex relationship [Presentation in English] Roman Hoffman

13:00 - 14:30 Lunch break

14:30 - 15:30 Session V Invited speakers:
Embracing digital data for the assessment of International migration in Latin America [Language of the session: English]
Emilio Zagheni (Chair)

Lessons learned in five years of data extraction. Using Facebook for examining international migration in LAC [Presentation in English] Martín Pedemonte
Limits and opportunities of digital traces for measuring international migration in Latin America [Presentation in English] Victoria Prieto

15:30 - 16:00 Coffee break

16:00 - 17:00 Closing remark
[Language of the session: English]
Emilio Zagheni and Victoria Prieto

For more information please get in touch with:
Carolina Coimbra Vieira coimbravieira@demogr.mpg.de
Julieta Bengochea julieta.bengochea@cienciassociales.edu.uy
Victoria Prieto victoria.prieto@cienciassociales.edu.uy

Organizers

Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR)
Programa de Población -- Facultad de Ciencias Sociales (Universidad de la República)
Facultad de Ingeniería (Universidad de la República)
Comisión Sectorial de Investigación Científica (CSIC, Universidad de la República)
Agencia Nacional de Investigación e Innovación (ANII)

Promotional Support

Asociación Latinoamericana de Población (ALAP)
IUSSP Panel on Digital and Computational Demography