Dr. Carmen Monico, A&T’s Associate Professor and RTI University Scholar, presented with Wayne Pitts from RTI’s Division for Applied Justice Research at the American Association of Criminology held in Chicago October 17-20, 2021.

The presentation was titled, Tracking Guatemalan Deportees and Their Intentions to Remigrate to the U.S. and was based on the Guatemala Repatriation Longitudinal Survey RTI conducted with researchers from Duke’s DevLab. The study included initial surveys from 1,359 Guatemalans deported from the U.S., selected at random, upon their arrival in Guatemala City.

Two rounds of follow-up telephone interviews were conducted with 401 and 309 consenting participants, respectively. Embedded conjoint and list experiments allowed for a better understanding of the Guatemalan deportation experience, returnees’ reintegration journeys, and factors affecting intentions to remigrate. Besides this conference presentation, the study will be presented at two more conferences in spring 2022.

The study findings were discussed in a policy-oriented article on the root causes of migration from the Central American Northern Triangle countries published by the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. A comprehensive study report was summarized in a chapter of the upcoming book titled Border Criminology, Migration and Human Rights in the Global South: An Interdisciplinary View, which Rowman & Littlefield and Lexington is expected to publish in 2022.