SPIA Assistant Professor Andrea Peña-Vasquez has spent most of her academic career studying—and now teaching—topics of migration and citizenship. This summer, thanks in part to funding from Pitt's University Center for International Studies (UCIS), she is expanding upon that base of knowledge with a new research project.
Peña-Vasquez was awarded the Global Academic Partnership (GAP) from Pitt’s Global Studies Center for her work on the Migrant Regularization Archive and Data (MiRADa) project. Developed in partnership with Pitt Assistant Professor Aala Abdelgadir (A&S) and Andrés Besserer Rayas from Colegio de México (Colmex), the MiRADa initiative is designed to document and analyze regularization policies and programs by which undocumented or irregular immigrants are granted legal status around the world.
"Regularization is one of the few migration policy tools that can immediately transform people’s lives—granting protection from deportation, access to labor rights, and political recognition," Peña Vasquez shared. "Although there is a growing body of work on regularization, it remains concentrated on Europe. As a result, we lack a comprehensive, comparative understanding of how regularization unfolds in other regions, especially in the Global South."
As recipients of GAP funding, the MiRADa team will receive financial support from the Global Studies Center during the 2025-2026 and 2026-2027 academic years. The GAP program aims strengthen interdisciplinary research and curriculum development on global themes, enhance international scholarly ties, and elevate the international profile of the University of Pittsburgh. Preference is given to projects that align with the Center’s research initiatives in Contested Cities, Critical World Ecologies, Global Health, and Migrations.
Drs. Peña-Vasquez and Abdelgadir met last year during the Global Politics Seminar, an event cosponsored by the School of Public and International Affairs and the department of Political Science at the Dietrich School. The pair quickly bonded over their shared research interests and commitments to interdisciplinary and publicly accessible scholarship. A regularization workshop at Colmex led Peña-Vasquez to learn of Besserer Rayas’ extensive research on regularization practices in Colombia and across Latin America, and the team was complete.
"This project was really born out of a conversation we had regarding President Trump’s mass deportation plans and how regularization is rarely deemed a viable alternative despite evidence pointing to numerous benefits for both immigrants and their receiving societies,” said Peña-Vasquez. “Although he and I are each familiar with regularization programs in Latin America and Europe, respectively, we realized we know very little about regularization programs in other regions, so we wanted to study this topic around the world."
One of the project’s goals is to create an open-access resource for scholars, policymakers, migration rights advocates, and the broader public. The team plans to co-author various papers using the MiRADa data and will be developing a website where students and members of the Pitt and international communities can explore the archive, access preliminary data, and follow the project’s progress. There are three undergraduate research assistants working on the project here at Pitt, and plans are in place to add student assistants at Colmex soon.
For other undergraduate and graduate students interested in learning more about regularization and migration policies while here at Pitt? You’re in luck.
"The topic of regularization will be part of two upcoming courses I’ll be teaching, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels,” Dr. Peña Vasquez said. “Next spring, I’m teaching an undergraduate course about labor migration titled Workers Without Borders. The following fall, I will be teaching a graduate course titled Unauthorized Migration: Policy and Practice, in which students will be examining state responses to irregular migration, including regularization. Findings from the MiRADa project will be incorporated into both classes as they develop."
Students interested in studying topics like immigration policy can learn more about our programs including the undergraduate minor in global policy and the graduate Master of Public and International Affairs (MPIA) degree.