Measuring Migration in Latin America: Leveraging digital traces, registers, censuses, and surveysMontevideo, Uruguay, 25-26 February 2025
This symposium was held in Montevideo at the School of Social Sciences of the Universidad de la República on February 25 and 26, bringing together demographers, data scientists, geographers, and sociologists from a dozen countries across the Americas and Europe. Participants discussed methodologies, Latin American data sources, and analytical approaches to estimating and examining internal and international migration.
Organized by the Programa de Población at the Universidad de la República (UDELAR) and the Department of Digital and Computational Demography at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR), the event was part of a partnership funded in 2019 by the Tandem Groups program of the Max Planck Society and the Agencia Nacional de Investigación e Innovación (Uruguay). Additionally, it marked the launch of the Group on Human Mobility and Digital Demography at the Universidad de la República, recently funded by the R+D Groups program of the Research Council of the Universidad de la República (CSIC, by its acronym in Spanish). Held under the auspices of the Asociación Latinoamericana de Población (ALAP) and the IUSSP Panel on Digital and Computational Demography, both associations played a key role in disseminating the call for papers, which led to a highly successful response, with over 30 top quality contributed papers.
Over the course of two days, participants engaged with inspiring keynote talks by Julieta Bengochea (Programa de Población, UDELAR), Claudia Masferrer (COLMEX), Francisco Rowe (Liverpool University), Emilio Zagheni (MPIDR), Maciej Danko (MPIDR), Jorge Rodríguez (CELADE-ECLAC), Roman Hoffmann (IIASA), Carolina Coimbra (MPIDR), Victoria Prieto (Programa de Población, UDELAR), and Martin Pedemonte (INCO, UDELAR). Throughout multiple sessions, keynote speakers shared insightful perspectives on the challenges and promises of new data sources in complementing traditional data for studying migration in the LAC region. They also engaged the audience in discussions on cutting-edge migration research.
Contributed papers expanded on these themes, presenting case studies and comparative analyses that showcased recent applications of digital traces to assess migration trends and attitudes toward immigration, as well as the potential of census data, public opinion surveys, and administrative records for quantifying migrant populations.
The event concluded with reflections on future research directions and the need for continued dialogue between regional and extra-regional research efforts aimed at quantifying migration stocks and flows and examining the social inclusion of migrants in and from Latin America.
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