RESEARCH

Migration and Refugee Politics

My research on global migration and refugee politics includes my dissertation, “Welcoming Migrants and Refugees: Governance, Labor, and Integration of Venezuelans in Brazil,” which addresses two primary questions: 1) How are migrants and refugees integrated into local communities, meaning, which domestic or international actors play a role in this process? And 2) what vulnerabilities do migrants and refugees face within state-run housing shelters at the border, depending on their personal identity? I chose Venezuelan migration to Brazil since 2017 as a case study of these contemporary processes, with a focus on the government’s reception and resettlement program called “Operation Welcome.” My fieldwork was funded by the Fulbright-Hays DDRA Fellowship and included 12 months of research across five field sites in Brazil where I gathered 290 semi-structured interviews, 60 participant observations, and over a 100 informal interviews. This grounded research approach has allowed me to theorize global migration governance from a bottom-up perspective and highlight the role of migrant and refugee populations in providing feedback that alters resettlement and integration policies. 

​

Manuscripts currently under review: ​

• “Street-level Bureaucrats and Venezuelan Migration to Brazil: Informal Strategies for Integration and Policymaking without Policy,” José O. Pérez, Under Review

• “Making Housing, Making Everyday (In)Security: Individuals, Discipline, and Shelter Policy for Venezuelan Migrants and Refugees in Brazil,” José O. Pérez, Under Review

​

​

Security Studies 

My research in the vein of security studies has focused on the role of race and gender, often overlooked facets of international security, in impacting how individuals experience (in)security and vulnerability. These projects have included a host of mixed methods approaches ranging from discourse analysis, quantitative text analysis, media coverage analysis, interviews, to participant observations. For instance, I compared diplomatic performances, such as speeches and other official documents, during the Luiz Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro presidential administrations in Brazil, to theorize how different diplomatic approaches can function to occlude on-going violence towards racialized populations (afro-Brazilians for the former, and Indigenous groups for the latter). These findings were published in Security Studies.

​

My research in the area of security studies also includes a manuscript co-authored with Dr. Tarsis Brito (University of London) which challenges securitization theory’s conventional emphasis on border control and sovereignty reaffirmation vis-à-vis migratory influxes and human mobility. Instead, we reimagine migration securitization not as a process inherently tied to keeping people out of the national territory, but rather as one which selectively screens who and how individuals cross international borders and are incorporated into local labor markets, despite official narrative of exclusion and “border fortification." We aim to transform this research agenda into a broader book project. 

​

Publications include: 

• “Rethinking Migration Securitization: Bureaucratic Militarization and Racial Capitalism within Brazil’s ‘Operation Welcome,’” José O. Pérez and Tarsis Brito, Revise and Resubmit, European Journal of International Relations

• “Brazil’s Foreign Policy and Security Under Lula and Bolsonaro: Hierarchy, Racialization, and Diplomacy,” José O. Pérez, Security Studies 32.4-5 (2023): 653-679.

• “The Dilma Rousseff Presidency: From Motherly Discourse to Queer Impeachment,” José O. Pérez, International Feminist Journal of Politics 24.1 (2022): 40-62.

• “Lula, Dilma, and Temer: The Rise and Fall of Brazilian Foreign Policy,” André Reis da Silva and José O. Pérez, Latin American Perspectives 46.4 (2019): 169-185.

​

​

Global Health Politics 

Research in global health politics includes my master’s thesis research, where I examined Cuban medical professionals working in remote areas of Brazil via the "Mais Médicos" ("More Doctors") international medical cooperation agreement between the two countries. While gathering interviews and conducting fieldwork, I discovered most of the Cuban professionals sent as part of the medical cooperation agreement were women, and their main impact on local healthcare systems was redefining patient-doctor relations by delivering care in ways local populations had never experienced before. I theorized these findings via a feminist International Relations theoretical lens, resulting in an article in Contexto Internacional, co-authored with André Reis (professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul). 

 

Other research in this area includes an intersectional analysis of how different social groups experienced vulnerability in diverging ways during the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil. This research was co-authored with Vinícius Mendes (Post-doc at Radboud University) and published in Security Dialogue. For this research, we drew upon the concept of “Global Health Security” to analyze how female healthcare workers, domestic employees, and informal laborers were placed in varying situations of exposure to the virus vis-à-vis other groups of workers. Health insecurity, we contend, positions certain bodies for biopolitical control and premature death, and others for security and safety. We sustain these claims via discourse analysis, documental analysis, and other qualitative methods. 

​

Publications include:

• "The Politics and Temporality surrounding PrEP: Identity, Risk, and Bio/Necro-political Health Care Inequality,” José O. Pérez, Under Review

• “The Intersectionality of Health (In)Security: Healthcare, Disposable Workers, and Exposure within Brazil’s Pandemic Politics,” José O. Pérez and Vinícius Mendes, Security Dialogue 54.2 (2023): 155-172.

• “Cuban Medical Internationalism through a Feminist Perspective,” José O. Pérez and André Reis da Silva, Contexto Internacional 41.1 (2019): 65-8.

​​​​​​

​