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Current Projects

The Long Shadow of Immigration Enforcement: Deportation Consequences in Migrants´ Countries of Origin

Across destination countries in the Global North, deportation threats are on the rise. Yet, their impact on migrants’ communities of origin remains largely absent from current migration debates. Through household surveys in El Salvador—a country deeply affected by forced returns—we seek to unpack the externalities of deportations. How do forced returns reshape family dynamics, livelihoods, and coping strategies in transnational households?

GIFK - Interdisciplinary Group for the Study of Conflict and Peace

The GIFK was founded to study the complexities of the Colombian conflict: a conflict that has gone through various phases, whose main actors repeatedly transforms themselves, where armed and political actors constantly and informally interact, crime and conflict are intrinsically linked, and where, as a result, a peaceful equilibrium is anything but reality. It is our conviction that to understand such persistence in high levels of violence and conflict – far from a unique phenomenon globally – only interdisciplinary research offers the tool kit to make developments intelligible that incorporate, social, legal, political, and economic transformations and evolutions. The aim is to build a study group that adheres to those interdisciplinary principles and collaboratively explores cases of violence beyond Colombia and Latin America.

Temporalities of Future

The International Research Training Group (IRTG) ‘Temporalities of Future’, aims to offer a new perspective on the study of temporalities of the future in the social and cultural sciences. In close collaboration with colleagues from different disciplines, we seek to contribute to the growing field of research on temporalities of the future by realigning investigations towards a better understanding of global entanglements and the meaning of cultural heterogeneity, with Latin America serving as the primary example of both aspects.

Mecila - Maria Sibylla Merian Centre Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America

The Maria Sibylla Merian Centre Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America (Mecila) is one of five international research colleges in the humanities and social sciences funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in cooperation with local institutions and funding agencies. Mecila's research focuses on past and present forms of social, political and cultural coexistence in Latin America and the Caribbean. Conviviality serves as a central analytical concept for examining different forms of coexistence in specific contexts that are characterised by both diversity and inequality.

Mediating History through Entertainment Media in Latin America. Laboratory for Memory Research and Digital Methods

As part of the programme to promote regional studies of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the project "Mediating History through Entertainment Media in Latin America. Laboratory for Memory Research and Digital Methods - GUMELAB" headed by Prof. Dr. Stefan Rinke and Dr. Mónika Contreras Saiz was approved. The research project examines the construction, mediation and trans-/national reception of Latin American history and memory through telenovelas and series, as well as their effects on the political attitudes and historical consciousness of viewers.

trAndeS "Trans-Andean Network of Sustainability"

trAndeS seeks to create and disseminate scientific knowledge that can contribute to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) throughout the Andean region.

Immigration Enforcement across the World: Drivers and Consequences of Cross-Country Variation in Deportation Risks

The prominence of deportations in contemporary political debates stands in stark contrast to the limited systematic research on their drivers and consequences. This study aims to build a country-by-country database of deportations using administrative records from host countries. By doing so, we seek to uncover broader patterns and mechanisms shaping the political economy of deportation regimes in host countries, as well as their impacts on migrants’ countries of origin.

Self-testimonies of Jews after their return from Latin America to Berlin (1945/49-1970)

From 1933 until the end of World War II, Latin America was an important destination for refugees from National Socialism. After 1945, many tried to return to Germany despite their experiences of persecution in order to reclaim the property that had been stolen from them and to be compensated for the injustice done to them and their families. The project funded by the Einstein Foundation Berlin examines the fates of these people on the basis of the files of the Compensation Authority and the Reparations Office of the State of Berlin. The sources available there bear witness to the exile experiences, the family situation and networks as well as the continuities of anti-Semitism and the problems of return migration and compensation in post-war Berlin.

ForMOVe - Forced Migration and Organized Violence: A Comparative Study in Europe and the Americas

Forced Migration and Organized Violence (ForMOVe) is a joint research project between the Faculty of Social Science at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and the Institute for Latin American Studies. The DFG funded project will compare and contrast forms of forced migration in its interrelation with organized violence. The project follows a transnational focus and comparison between the two transit countries Turkey and Mexico, respectively the two regions of Europe and the Americas.

Shared Soundscapes

This collaborative research project explores the shared soundscapes that emerge when actors such as the Peruvian state, archives, anthropologists and local communities negotiate music and dance traditions in the context of cultural heritage or identity politics. The interest of the communities of the North Coast and the Central Rainforest in activating their cultural heritage, which is stored in state archives and private archives, is the focus of the cultural and social anthropological research project headed by Prof. Dr. Ingrid Kummels, Freie Universität Berlin.
Ingrid Kummels, Freie Universität Berlin, and Prof. Dr. Gisela Cánepa, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, which is funded by the DFG.

Prodigy

Success in land- and biodiversity management in one region can hardly be transferred to another region without specifically tailored adaptations. Our interdisciplinary German-Brazilian-Peruvian-Bolivian research-consortium aims at jointly develop such specifically tailored solutions for the MAP-region (triple frontier Brazil/Acre-Peru/Madre de Dios-Bolivia/Pando).

The Global Change of the Category 'Forced Labour'

The research project examines the continuities and ruptures in the interpretation of forced labour in the ILO, namely on the one hand as a colonial phenomenon in the imperial context of the interwar period, and on the other hand in the current structural context of global social inequality.

Research Centre Brazil

To strengthen and institutionalise the long-standing Brazil research, the LAI founded the interdisciplinary Brazil Research Centre in 2010. The centre focuses on projects and research activities with a cultural and social science orientation whose common perspective is "Brazil in the world context".

Narrating Violence: Artistic Practices and Research from Latin America and Beyond

How to explore and narrate extreme violence without succumbing to and contributing to paralysis? What artistic, aesthetic and research strategies have artists from Latin America and other postcolonial settings developed to make the invisible visible and the unheard audible? What kinds of (counter)knowledge are generated in these processes? Researchers from the LAI, together with researchers and artists from elsewhere, discussed these and other questions in a workshop-laboratory co-funded by the Institute for Latin American Studies and the Margherita-von-Brentano-Zentrum für Geschlechterforschung.

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