Anna L'Hommedieu '02

By Alicia Nemiccolo MacLeay '97

When Anna L'Hommedieu '02 studied in Quito, Ecuador, last year, she often saw Ecuadorians standing in long lines in front of the Spanish embassy waiting for temporary work permits. Soon she will join them.

With more than 60 percent of Ecuador's population unemployed or underemployed, the mass migration to Spain reflects a desperation for jobs and money, says L'Hommedieu. To research immigration policies between the two countries and document the daily lives of the 150,000-200,000 Ecuadorian migrants in Spain, L'Hommedieu will spend a year as a temporary immigrant--and a 2002-03 Thomas J. Watson Foundation Fellow.

L'Hommedieu's project, "Temporary Immigrants: A Permanent Solution?" incorporates sociology, economics and anthropology to document the movement and displacement of people. "Leading migration scholars tend to have a mixed background," said L'Hommedieu, an international studies major and economics minor.

After L'Hommedieu's own "despedida" (good-bye ceremony) in Oregon this summer, she will travel to Ecuador and on to Spain, where she will live in immigrant communities in Madrid, Barcelona and rural regions for a few months at a time, moving as the migrant population does. L'Hommedieu plans to use a digital camera and tape recorder to record the lives of undocumented and documented Ecuadorian migrants at home, at work and in public. Last year in Quito L'Hommedieu interviewed men, women and children from the city's streets, buses and universities for a paper on machismo.

To analyze Ecuador and Spain's bilateral policies and their economic implications, L'Hommedieu will meet with government officials and with representatives of organizations in Barcelona and Madrid that protect immigrant workers' rights. She will also interview Spaniards on attitudes towards the influx of temporary workers into their country.

L'Hommedieu sees Spain and Ecuador as a microcosm of migration disputes all over the world. Wages sent home by Ecuadorians working abroad, predominantly as unskilled laborers in the agricultural sector and in homes, restaurants and hotels, are Ecuador's largest source of income after petroleum, says L'Hommedieu.

"This is a huge deal for two countries," said L'Hommedieu. "Human labor, as capital, is moving freely from one country to another. Does it create problems or a solution? How do countries collaborate?"

The culmination of L'Hommedieu's project will include an exhibition in Quito of her photographs and biographical sketches, so Ecuadorians can view their fellow citizen's lives abroad.

L'Hommedieu expects to return home to her family after 12 months away--a plan many migrants abroad would envy.