Erika Arenas is a professor of Sociology whose research has focused on investigating the complex association between health and migration. She is interested in understanding (i) how health affects the decision to migrate, (ii) what are the effects of migration on health outcomes for migrants on destination areas, (iii) what are the effects of migration on health outcomes of the family that stay behind, and (iv) what are the social and institutional factors affecting the decision to migrate. Currently she is examining how sending remittances may impact immigrants’ health outcomes.

The last ten years of her career, she has been actively participating in the collection of a unique dataset to study migrant populations: the Mexican Family Life Survey (http://www.ennvih-mxfls.org), which is a long term panel study that has successfully tracked and interviewed respondents across national borders. Currently, Prof. Arenas is co-PI and co-Director of the fourth wave of the MxFLS (MxFLS-4), which was fielded in 2017 and 2018. Given that the panel will cover a period of fifteen years, she plans to use these data to investigate: (1) the mechanisms driving immigrant health deterioration/improvement in the United States, (2) the impact of documentation status on immigrant’s life chances, (3) the impact of migration on life chances outcomes for family members that stay in the sending region, and (4) the social determinants of domestic and international migration.