Professeure
Professor
Université d’Aix-Marseille
Biography
Virginie Baby-Collin is Professor of Geography at Aix Marseille University and the Research Centre UMR CNRS Telemme, Aix en Provence (France), as well as a junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF). Her research focuses on social and urban geography with a qualitative approach. She investigates international migration issues, integration and transnational ways of life among migrants, fragmentation and cosmopolitanism in metropolitan contexts, socio-spatial segregation and gentrification patterns in the city. Her research has focused on Latin America for over 20 years and lately extended to Mediterranean Europe and the USA (she was a Visiting Scholar in Columbia University between 2010-2012). She has been coordinating a transdisciplinary research program on Migrations and Territories in the Mediterranean at the Maison Mediterranéenne des Sciences de l’Homme in Aix en Provence for several years.
She is currently involved in several research projects focusing on 1.ordinary lives among precarious citizens in the centre of Marseilles (programme PUCA, French Ministry for Urbanism), 2. the coordination of an historical atlas of migrations and mobilities in the Mediterranean (programme MMSH-Ecole Française de Rome, Italy), 3.transnational migration, circulation of rights and responsibilities, with a focus on transnational social protection among migrants from the Global South (programme ITN Marie Curie led by Maastricht University) ; 4) Mobility trajectories of young second generations in cities of Europe and the US (IUF programm). Among her recent publications, the coedition of several books : Borders, Migrations and mobilities. Perspectives from the Mediterranean (Peter Lang, 2014), Le Mexique dans les migrations internationales (special issue Hommes et Migrations, n° 1296, 2012), La famille transnationale dans tous ses états (special issue Autrepart, N°56-57, 2011), Cuando México enfrenta la globalización. La zona metropolitana de Monterrey (Plaza y Valdez editores, Mexico, 2010), Migrations et territoires de la mobilité dans l’espace méditerranéen (special issue Méditerranée, 2009), Migrants des Suds (2009, IRD-PUM).
Research project
As a newcomer in the Middle East region, she will give a theoretical insight both on the effects of urban migrants settlements (relations with the others, migrants and non migrants, socio-spatial dynamics, in the housing market as well as in urban public space), and on transnational dynamics linking migrants to their country of origin through a diversity of networks (related to the 1st and 2nd axis of the project). She is also willing to accompany other members of the project specialists of the Middle East region on fieldwork (Lebanon, Turkey or Jordan), participating in the process with an external look and to apply her expertise on other regions of the world to the Middle Eastern context.
Keywords
Transnational practices, urban settlements, copresence / interactions, “lived in” spaces, urban public spaces