Faculty Research & Teaching Concentration Area: 

Migrations & Diasporas

The Department of Sociology/Anthropology has long been at the forefront of research and instruction in the areas of international and transnational migration; accommodation, assimilation and their contestation among first- and second-generation immigrants; diasporic communities and identities; and many other topics and issues related to peoples on the move.  We are located in the

We are home to several key research initiatives and institutes at FIU that address the themes outlined above including (1) the International Migration Initiative, (2) the Immigration & Ethnicity Institute and (3) the trans-Atlantic consortium (TIRES) linking universities in the European Union and the U.S. with faculty who focus on migration research.  Our faculty and students regularly intern at the Carlos A. Costa Immigration and Human Rights Clinic, a legal services provider at the FIU School of Law, where they serve as translators, background researchers and paralegals.  We work closely with research centers at FIU such as the Latin American & Caribbean Center and the Center for Transnational and Comparative Studies and interdisciplinary programs such as African-New World Studies, particularly its graduate seminar “Interrogating the African Diaspora” directed by Dr. Rahier of our faculty.  We are in the process of developing undergraduate and graduate certificates in migration and diaspora studies.  We also are developing a website housing a vast array links to international and U.S. resources on migration and diasporas.

Foundational Courses: (Recommended to take first)

SYD 4237 Immigration & Refugees         
ANT 3451 Race & Ethnicity             

GRADUATE

SYD 6236 International Migration and Refugees           
SYD XXX (New Course) Diasporas, Migration, & Globalization           
SYD 6705 Comparative Analysis of Ethnicity & Race  

Additional, Recommended Courses:            

UNDERGRADUATE           

ANT 4343 Cuban Culture and Society           
ANT 3442 Urban Anthropology           
ANT 4397 African Diaspora Cultures and Performativity
SYD 3620 Sociology of Miami
SYD 3810 Sociology of Gender
SYD 4410 Urban Sociology
SYD 4621 Cubans in the U.S.
SYD 4606 World Jewish Community
SYD 4700 Sociology of Minorities/Race and Ethnic Relations
SYG 2010 Social Problems
SYP 3300 Social Movements
SYP 4410 Social Conflict           
SYG 4060 Sociology of Sexuality           
SYP 4454 Globalization & Society                       

GRADUATE

Certificates Offered

Associated Faculty And Research Interests

Liliana Goldín, Professor
Director, Graduate Program
Ph.D., State University of New York - Albany, 1986.

Dr. Goldín's research focuses on issues related to economic restructuring in rural Latin America, economic strategies of Maya and non-Maya people in Guatemala, and the processes of economic and cultural change. Recent projects include the study of economic and social differentiation in a garment producing township of western Guatemala, the socioeconomic impact of non-traditional agricultural exports in townships of the central highlands of Guatemala, and the economic strategies of very poor women in a peripheral area of Guatemala City. She is currently working on a monograph entitled Ideology in Production: A Cultural Economy of Rural Guatemala where she explores attitudes towards the economy in the context of various economic practices. She is also interested in the labor conditions that Latin American migrants encounter in the United States and the processes of identity formation in the context of transnationalism. Her books include Procesos Globales en el Campo de Guatemala. Opciones Económicas y Transformaciones Ideológicas. and Identities on the Move: Transnational Processes in North America and the Caribbean Basin.  goldin@fiu.edu

A. Douglas Kincaid, Associate Professor
Ph.D., The Johns Hopkins University, 1987
Vice-Provost for International Affairs

Dr. Kincaid's principal interests as a sociologist have concerned the political economy of development in Latin America, and especially Central America, a region he has studied and visited regularly since the mid-1970s. His most recent research was undertaken as lead consultant for Central America 2020, a joint US-European project to devise a regional development model with a 20-year time frame, and he co-authored the project's final report, published in October 2000. He is active in the American Sociological Association, for which he currently serves as ASA representative to the International Sociological Association, and in the Latin American Studies Association, for which he chairs the LASA 21st Century Task Force. From 1986 to 2000, he was associate director and then research director of FIU's Latin American and Caribbean Center. In fall 2000, he was appointed Vice Provost for International Studies, in which position he has lead academic responsibility for all aspects of the university's international studies programs and relationships with foreign institutions.  kincaidd@fiu.edu

Abraham D. Lavender, Professor
Ph.D., University of Maryland, 1972

Dr. Lavender is a sociologist specializing in ethnicity, emphasizing the Jewish community, but also including Hispanic (mostly Cuban) politics in Miami-Dade, black culture in Miami-Dade, and French Huguenots. Five of his six books study ethnicity (see link to CV). Studying descendants of secret Jews of the Spanish-Portuguese diaspora is a special interest. He has received outstanding teacher awards, and shows his love of teaching by having one of the department's heaviest teaching loads including ethnicity, sexuality, social deviance, political sociology, and sociology through film. Dr. Lavender has applied his sociology in Miami Beach as special assistant to the mayor, vice-chair of the Housing Authority, chair of the Homeless Committee, and founding president of the Miami Beach Historical Association. As president of the local Phi Beta Kappa Association, he worked diligently to help FIU obtain a PBK chapter for its students. Dr. Lavender is president of the national Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies.  lavender@fiu.edu

Sarah J. Mahler, Associate Professor
Ph.D., Columbia University, 1992

Dr. Mahler is a cultural anthropologist and a specialist on international migration and the transnational ties that migrants sustain and build between their homelands and their adoptive countries. Her research has focused primarily on migrations from Central America and the Caribbean to the United States. In recent years she has pioneered research on how gender relations are negotiated transnationally, co-authoring a special volume on this issue in the journal Identities: Global Studies on Culture and Power and articles in the International Migration Review. She has studied the role religion plays in the lives of different immigrant groups in Miami and the transnational religious ties that link several countries, including Cuba and Nicaragua, to Miami. Among her publications are two books documenting the lives of Salvadorans in the U.S., American Dreaming: Immigrant Life on the Margins and Salvadorans in Suburbia.  mahlers@fiu.edu

Lisandro Pérez, Professor
Ph.D., University of Florida, 1974

Dr. Pérez has a lifelong interest in Cuban migration to the U.S., the dynamics of the Cuban-American community, and social change in Cuba. His writings have appeared in the Latin American Research Review, the Journal of Latin American Studies, and the International Migration Review. He is the editor of the journal Cuban Studies and the co-author of The Legacy of Exile: Cubans in the U.S. In 1991, he founded FIU's Cuban Research Institute and developed it into the premier academic center in the U.S. for the study of Cuba and Cuban Americans, serving as its director until 2003. From 1997 to 1998 he was a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation. For the 2004-2005 academic year, Dr. Pérez was awarded a Mel and Lois Tukman Fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers of the New York Public Library for research on the Cuban community in New York City during the 19th and early 20th centuries. perezl@fiu.edu

Jean Muteba Rahier, Associate Professor
Ph.D., Université de Paris X, Nanterre, France, 1994
Editor, Journal of Latin American Anthropology

As a social and cultural anthropologist, Dr. Rahier's primary focus is on identity processes in the African diaspora in Latin America. His approach to the study of identity processes is through the analysis of festivities and rituals, beauty contests, oral traditions, the imagination of plantation history, the analysis of representations of blackness in the press as well as the representations of Africa and Africans in films. Most of his fieldwork has been in the Province of Esmeraldas and the Chota-Mira Valley, Ecuador. Dr. Rahier was born in what was then the Belgian Congo, from a Congolese mother and a Belgian father and grew up in Belgium. He is planning research on inter-racial intimacy in the Belgian Congo; this has led to study of the Belgian Congo archives now located in Brussels. His courses all relate to Africa and or the African diaspora. Dr. Rahier coordinates international graduate summer seminar, "Interrogating the African Diaspora" which is funded by the Ford Foundation, 2004-06.  jrahier@fiu.edu

Alex Stepick, Professor
Ph.D., University of California at Irvine, 1974
Director, Immigration and Ethnicity Institute

Dr. Stepick has researched the impact of immigration on Miami for the past 20 years. His coauthored book, City on the Edge, on how immigration has changed Miami, won both the Robert Park Award for the best book in Urban Sociology and the Anthony Leeds Award for the best book in Urban Anthropology. His most recent book is This Land Is Our Land: Immigrants and Power in Miami. He has also written Pride Against Prejudice: Haitians in the United States, Social Inequality in Oaxaca: A History of Resistance and Change. He co-edited Newcomers in the Workplace: Immigrants and The Restructuring of the U.S. Economy, and Miami Now! Immigration, Ethnicity, and Social Change. The AAA and the Society for Applied Anthropology awarded him the Margaret Mead Award for his research on Haitian refugees. He received the largest grant ever in Cultural Anthropology from the National Science Foundation. He recently served a National Academy of Sciences Committee on Immigrant Children and Health and on the Cultural Anthropology Panel of the National Science Foundation. Dr. Stepick has testified before the U.S. Congress and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee Affairs and his work has been used by the British House of Commons.  stepick@fiu.edu

Richard Tardanico, Associate Professor and Chair
Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University, 1979

Dr. Tardanico's current research centers on Central America, and focuses on issues such as neoliberal restructuring and the poor; urbanization and social inequality; sustainable agriculture and campesino households .He has published on Mexico, Colombia and Costa Rica where he was a Fulbright scholar (1985-87). Following his Fulbright, he studied the contemporary interplay of the world political economy on Latin American cities. His edited books include Crises in the Caribbean Basin; Global Restructuring, Employment, and Social Inequality in Urban Latin America; and Poverty or Development: Global Restructuring and Regional Transformations in the US South and the Mexican South (with Mark B. Rosenberg). His publications have appeared in journals such as Comparative Studies in Society and History, Politics and Society, Theory and Society, Studies in Comparative International Development, and International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.  tardanic@fiu.edu

Rebecca K. Zarger, Assistant Professor
Ph.D., University of Georgia, 2002
Co-Editor, Journal of Ecological Anthropology

Dr. Zarger is a cultural anthropologist who conducts research on environmental knowledge, learning and child development, land use change and conservation in Central America. She has a joint appointment with the Department of Environmental Studies. Her work has focused on how subsistence knowledge is learned, taught, and transformed in Q'eqchi' Maya communities in Belize. She is currently interested in change in subsistence practices and learning environments over time in the Q'eqchi' region. She serves as the Anthropology and Environment Section column editor in Anthropology News and co-edited the book, Ethnobiology and Biocultural Diversity. Prior to coming to FIU, Dr. Zarger worked with the Human Dimensions of Global Change Committee of the National Academies of Science/National Research Council in Washington, D.C. on public participation in environmental decision making. Dr. Zarger teaches courses in population and environment issues; human ecology, migration and land use change; anthropology and education; and ecological anthropology.  zarger@fiu.edu