William & Patricia Ayers Global Tipping Points - The Future of Democratization in The Northern Triangle

William & Patricia Ayers Global Tipping Points Series

A Less Free World?

The Future of Democratization

in the Northern Triangle

October 18, 2022

6:00 pm 

Mara Auditorium

Southern New Hampshire University

About the Program

According to Freedom House, 94% of Latin America's population lives in countries that are classified as "free" or "partly free".  Nevertheless, democracy still faces acute challenges in the region. The COVID-19 pandemic has hit Central American countries particularly hard and has exacerbated already high levels of socio-economic inequality. While elections are mostly competitive and contested, authoritarian movements and parties have been gaining traction. Corruption that stifles socio-economic opportunities is deep seated. As economic conditions have deteriorated gang violence has increased, in turn contributing to many in the region voting with their feet, migrating northward for out of fears of physical safety as much as economic opportunity.  

Join the World Affairs Council of New Hampshire as we focus on the particular challenges confronting the future of democratization in the Northern Triangle with Katrina Burgess of Tufts University.

About the Speaker

Katrina Burgess is Associate Professor of Political Economy and Director of the Henry J. Leir Institute for Migration and Human Security at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. She is the author of two award-winning books: Courting Migrants: How States Make Diasporas and Diasporas Make States (Oxford, 2020) and Parties and Unions in the New Global Economy (Pittsburgh, 2004). She has published numerous articles and book chapters on labor politics, remittances, migration, and diasporas, including a recent article in Electoral Studies with Michael Tyburski on political party outreach to voters abroad. In 2019, she wrote and produced Waylaid in Tijuana, a documentary about Haitian and Central American migrants whose journeys to the United States are disrupted by shifts in U.S. policy.

Her current research addresses (1) how migrants traveling north through Mexico assess risk and process information regarding their prospects for entering the United States; and (2) the impact of restrictionist immigration policies on U.S.-Mexico border communities. Before coming to Fletcher, she taught at Brown University, Syracuse University, UCLA, and the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM). She received her PhD in Politics from Princeton University.

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