Teaching research projects

The study trip deals with the relationship between sustainable economies and social cohesion. The aim is to analyze social cohesion in (indigenous) communities using the example of the Maya comunidades in Yucatán in southern Mexico in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and other natural disasters. Central questions are a.) How does the COVID-19 pandemic affect (ethnic) communities? b.) What forms of solidarity do the inhabitants of rural Yucatán develop in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and other natural disasters? c.) How do community economic structures change in the course of crisis(es)?

The study trip focuses on migration-related support structures, organizations and actors in the context of current social and political developments and analyses infrastructural bottlenecks in support work and challenges at the interface between civil society and academia. A central question is how the negotiation of belonging along racialized and sexual-gendered orders takes place in support work.

The global coffee market is based on the quantity and quality of available coffee beans. Europe, Japan and the USA are the largest buyers, while the main countries of origin include Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia and Mexico. Coffee from the Mexican South in particular plays a major role in global coffee production. Zapatista communities offer their coffee on the world market as an alternative to conventional or collectively organized coffee cultivation. The working conditions and social effects of communitarian economies thus also come into focus, making them particularly interesting for social science research. As a result, the teaching research project focused on 1) the production conditions for coffee, particularly in the Zapatista cooperatives in comparison to traditional coffee fincas and 2) whether and to what extent social upgrading can be observed in agriculture (decent-work?).

The Mexican south has one of the highest rates of socio-structural marginalization in the country, which can be seen as push factors for increasing migration in search of economic livelihoods and to improve their own living conditions. In rural and indigenous contexts in particular, migration regions have emerged over the last 15 years in which forms of seasonal and circular migration are on the rise. At the same time, the Soconusco region in Chiapas is a traditional port of call for seasonal commuter migration from neighboring regions such as Guatemala and increasingly also from Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua due to its agricultural production sites (coffee and fruit plantations). The teaching research project aims to investigate these and other factors influencing forms and actors of migration and to trace the complex diversification processes of migration using the southern region as an example. With a view to the thematic complex of migration-human rights-gender, various realities of life in and around the southern Mexican border region will be analyzed by the students in qualitative-empirical projects.

Conception and organization of the symposium "Handle with Care - Masculinity and Care Work in the Context of Migration", funded by the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Hessen e.V. and from the special funds of the Sociology Department

As part of the teaching research project , we will make stops in Mexico City, Oaxaca, San Cristóbal and Tapachula on our way to the southern border and conduct interviews and discussions with renowned social scientists, members and representatives of migrant and women's organizations and social organizations (NGOs) and with migrants. In the teaching research project, we will deal with the border regime on the Mexican southern border, with the changing rural and local structures in the context of migration and with the realities of life of (trans)migrants, their families and children in the region of origin. The effects of migrations on local gender relations and the influences of gender on (trans)migrations (paths, forms and reasons) are of particular thematic relevance for the teaching research project. In the context of intersectionally related structures of exclusion (such as race, class, gender, etc.), it is primarily the women from the indigenous communities who are the focus of the journey.