E-mail:
susanne.willers [at] fu-berlin.de
Areas of research:
Migration, gender and violence, forced migration and refugee protection, care and transnational families
Regional focus:
Latin America (Central America and Mexico)
Professional experience:
Seit 2023
Research Coordinator/ Postdoctoral Researcher DFG project "Stay, Return or Move on: Analyzing Life-Course Strategies of Forced Migrants in Four Transit Countries: Türkiye, Jordan, Mexico and Colombia” , Lateinamerika-Institut (LAI), Freie Universität Berlin, https://www.migration-violence.org/
2022 - 2023
Postdoctoral Researcher at TU Dortmund, Forschungskoordinatorin: GEN-MIGRA: “Gender, mobilities and migration during and post COVID-19 pandemic - vulnerability, resilience and renewal”, www.genmigra.org
2021
Associated Researcher ABI Freiburg, Member of the Cluster Forced Migration
2018 - 2020
Member of Post-Doc- Research Group at SUDIMER, UNAM, Mexico
2018 - 2019
Research Fellow (Post-Doc) am Centro de Estudios Interdisciplinarias en Ciencias y Humanidades (CEIICH), UNAM
2017 - 2018
Lecturer at the IEESFORD, El Salvador and FU-Berlin
2014 - 2018
Member of Research Group Entre dos fuegos at the CIESAS, Mexico
2015
Visiting fellow at the Department of Human Ecology, University of California, Davis
2009 - 2010
Project Assistant at Foundation Rosa-Luxemburg in Mexico-City
2008 - 2009
Research Fellow at NGO GEA- Grupo de Estudios Ambientales for sustainable development in Guerrero, Mexico with a scholarship of the German- Mexican program for cooperation In¬Went/ CONACYT.
Education:
2012 - 2018
Dissertation in Political and Social Sciences at the Postgraduate Programm of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Thesis: Migración transnacional, género y violencia: Las experiencias de mujeres migrantes Centroamericanas en México. With distinction (“mención honorífica”) and awarded as best thesis on transit migration by Cátedra Jorge Durand
2001 - 2008
Graduate Studies of Sociology, Ethnology and Political Sciences at Freie Universität Berlin, thesis about transnational migration of indigenous communities to the USA, at the Latin- America- Institute (LAI, FU- Berlin)
2002 - 2003
DAAD- Scholarship for Study for Sociology at Universidad Autónoma de México (UAM-Iztapalapa, Mexiko-Stadt)
Additional information:
Networks
Mitglied des Netzwerk Fluchtforschung, IMISCOE & IASFM
Publications
- Willers, Susanne (2024). Navigating the COVID-19 crisis: exploring care arrangements and gendered inequalities for migrant women in transnational families in Berlin. Special Issue: The Transformation of Transnational Care in Times of the Pandemic, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2024.2351630
- Willers, Susanne (2024). Gendered patterns of mobility and access to refugee protection of Central American migrants and refugees in Mexico. In X. S. Alba Villalever, S.; Pries, L.; & Calderón Morillón, O. (Ed.), Forced Migration across Mexico: Organized Violence, Migrant Struggles, and Life Trajectories (Vol. 1, pp. 145-165). Routledge. https://doi.org/ https://doi.org/10.4324/9781032614052
- Willers, Susanne (2023). “They don't care about people; they only care about the money”: the effects of border enforcement, commodification and migration industries on the mobility of migrants in transit through Mexico [Original Research]. Frontiers in Sociology, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2023.1113027
- Willers, Susanne (2020). Changing mobility regimes and care: Central American women confronting processes of entrapment in southern Mexico. Special Issue: Families confronting borders The Journal of Family Research, 32(3), 455-472. https://doi.org/10.20377/jfr-361
- Willers, Susanne (2020). Régimen migratorio y género: la movilidad e inmovilidad de refugiadas centroamericanas como un recurso de sobrevivencia In L. Gandini (Ed.), Temas y aproximaciones actuales para el estudio de las migraciones y movilidades en las Américas (pp. 137-165). Ciudad de México: SDI, SUDIMER, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).
- Willers, Susanne (2019). Migración, trabajo y subjetividad: Las experiencias de mujeres centroamericanas en tránsito por México. En: Varela, Amarela; Cordero, Blanca y Mezzadra, Sandro (Eds.): América Latina en Movimiento. Migraciones, límites a la movilidad y sus desbordamientos. Barcelona y CDMX: Traficantes de sueño, Tinta Limón y UACM.
- Willers, S. (2019). Confrontar la violencia. Proyectos migratorios y estrategias de supervivencia de mujeres migrantes en tránsito por México. In H. Asakura & M. Torres Falcon (Eds.), Entre dos fuegos: naturalización e invisibilidad de la violencia de género contra migrantes en territorio mexicano (pp. 39-78). Ciudad de México: CIESAS, UAM.
- Willers, Susanne (2018). Migration and Reproductive Strategies of Central American Women in Transit through Mexico. Special issue: The Social Reproductive Worlds of Migrants. Journal of Family Studies 24 (1), 59-75. doi:10.1080/13229400.2017.1398102
- Willers, Susanne (2016). Migración y violencia: las experiencias de mujeres migrantes centroamericanas en tránsito por México, en: Sociológica, año 31, septiembre-diciembre de 2016: 163-195.
