Prof. Yang-Yang Zhou and collaborator Prof. Margaret E. Peters (UCLA Political Science) have been awarded a research grant of $450,000 USD from the National Science Foundation for their book project, “Dignity and the Decision to Migrate, Where to Move, and When to Return.”
Worldwide, large-scale conflicts and other situations of economic and environmental insecurity have led to unprecedented numbers of people migrating across international borders. Yet, many people experiencing the same crises choose to stay within their country of origin. Zhou’s and Peters’ project seeks to understand how individuals in these insecure situations make decisions whether to migrate, where to settle if they decide to leave, and when to return home. While others have highlighted economic and safety considerations, this project focuses on internal values, namely dignity concerns and nationalism, that can influence this decision-making process.
Zhou and Peters will examine how these values affect migration decisions within several different forced displacement crises, including the Syrian Civil War, the economic collapse of Venezuela, and the gang and domestic violence fueled migration out of Central America.
They argue that civilians in forced migration situations seek to restore a sense of dignity. These individuals have often lost the normalcy that gives them dignity: their homes, their jobs and professional status, their ability to take care of themselves and their families, and their communities. Thus, they balance the dignity concerns of leaving—such as whether they be subjected to more indignities on the road or in a refugee camp; discrimination and mistrust where they settle; and will they be able to take care of themselves or to rely on charity—with the dignity concerns of rebuilding at home.
Spanning multiple disciplines and across the subfields of political science, this research hopes to further the understanding of how political dynamics shape individuals’ values and consequently, their migration decisions.
