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The Global South Migration Lab

The Global South Migration Lab (GSML) is Canada’s first research hub dedicated to migration within the Global South. For decades, the dominant narrative has focused on people fleeing the Global South to reach the Global North—framing migration as a threat rather than a complex, multidirectional reality. But most migrants never leave the Global South. Take Venezuela: almost 8 million people have fled, but 85% remain in neighbouring countries. Movements are often circular, regional, and shaped by local conditions—yet traditional migration theories, crafted in the Global North, fail to explain this.

GSML exists to flip the script. Led by Dr. Yvonne Su, the lab supports South-led research, collaborates with Global South scholars, and centres the lived experiences of displaced communities. It challenges a system in which most migration research is produced in high-income countries, often by academics with no direct ties to the regions they study, distorting narratives and policy responses. GSML spotlights the realities and resilience of South-South migration, working to build knowledge, shift power, and shape policies rooted in lived experience rather than colonial myths.

The lab brings together students and collaborators working at the intersection of global environmental politics, climate security, and migration studies. We investigate how climate change, disasters, and border regimes are reconfiguring power, security, and governance across regions, with a particular focus on Global South perspectives and South–South mobilities. Lab projects connect ethnographic and participatory methods with debates on sovereignty, borders, protection regimes, and the political economy of adaptation, always centring the lived experiences of displaced and marginalised communities.

The lab is interdisciplinary in both topic and method. Our projects combine ethnography, participatory GPS, community mapping, remote sensing, digital storytelling, and policy analysis to examine environmental change, displacement, and resilience in ways that centre lived experience and local and indigenous knowledge.

Lab Values

The lab is built on collaboration, mentorship, and care. We aim to create a research environment in which students and early-career scholars can develop strong methodological skills, produce meaningful scholarship, and participate in research partnerships grounded in reciprocity, inclusion, and shared intellectual growth. We are especially committed to supporting first-generation students, Global South scholars, and equity-deserving researchers. This commitment shapes how we recruit, mentor, collaborate, and build research teams.

What the lab works on:

  • Climate adaptation and environmental displacement

  • Disaster governance and community resilience

  • Border insecurity and forced migration

  • Indigenous knowledge and environmental justice

  • Participatory, visual, and arts-based methods

  • Policy engagement and public scholarship

Join the Lab

I welcome students and collaborators interested in interdisciplinary research on climate change, human security, mobility, and governance. I am particularly interested in mentoring scholars whose work is empirically grounded, methodologically creative, and committed to justice-oriented research.

Stakeholder workshop held in March 2026 in Can Tho, Vietnam. Lab member Dr. Ginbert Cuaton and GSML Director Dr. Yvonne Su were in attendance as Co-PIs of Project CAPE.

Global South Migration Lab Team

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Yvonne Su, Director

Dr. Yvonne Su is the Founder and Director of the Global South Migration Lab (GSML).

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Tyler Valiquette, Co-Director

Tyler is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Geography at UCL. He studies south-south queer forced migration in Latin America.

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Abril Ríos-Rivera, Fellow

Abril is a DPhil candidate in Migration Studies at the University of Oxford. She researches migration, gender, sexuality, and agency.

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Pratiti Roy, Fellow

Pratiti is a Doctoral Candidate studying the politics of migration in South Asia in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research.

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Ginbert Cuaton, Fellow

Dr. Cuaton is a Research Assistant Professor at Lingnan University where he researches social policy issues on disasters, displacements, and climate action in Southeast Asia.

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Tegan Hadisi, Fellow

Tegan Hadisi is an MPhil Candidate in Development Studies at the University of Oxford. Tegan’s thesis explores the mediation of knowledge in mega and giga-city projects in the MENA region.

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Ma Suza, Fellow

Ma Suza is a PhD candidate at Wageningen University and a Marine Social Scientist at the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) in Bremen, Germany.

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Mrinalini Kumar, Fellow

Mrinalini Kumar is a Ph.D. Research Scholar of Political Science studying the precarity of small island developing states at the Amity University, India.