
- Location
- Kortenaerkade 12, 's - Gravenhage
- Room
- I4-31
- Telephone
- 070426 0561
- winters@iss.nl
More information
Profile
My ethnographic work has evolved around the role and experience of im/mobility in people’s lives, in Central America and elsewhere. More specifically, I have focused on families’ cross-border labour and carework; migrant trajectories and illegalization; and the interplay between displacement and emplacement. Theoretically and methodologically, I build on anthropology, feminist geography and critical development studies.
I hold a MA in Development Studies (with Cultural Anthropology) from Radboud University Nijmegen, a MA in Latin American Studies from the University of Amsterdam, and a PhD in Development Studies from the University of Antwerp.
After my MA research on gendered violence in Belize City, for which I received the MA Thesis Award ‘Gerrit Huizer’ in 2007, and subsequent MA research with Central American migrants, my PhD research further explored topics of migration and im/mobility in Central America. The research took translocal Nicaraguan livelihoods as its starting point and showed the relevance of integrating a diversity of highly differentiated migration experiences for understanding migration-development dynamics. The ethnographic research consisted of multi-sited and multi-method fieldwork, including social mappings and a survey. It also built on a yearlong financial diaries project, in collaboration with research and development institute Nitlapan of the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in Managua. Focusing on asymmetric cross-border interdependencies (regional and international) and the livelihood dimensions of carework, ‘illegality’ and remittances, the thesis offered a comprehensive and contextually sensitive understanding of access to mobility and its implications for individual and family well-being.
Before joining ISS in September 2020, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University on the 'Lost in Migration' project, focusing on migrant skills in the Dutch carework sector. As a researcher at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Germany), I subsequently co-developed the ongoing project African trajectories across Central America: displacements, transitory emplacements, and ambivalent migration nodes, funded by the German Research Foundation. This project addresses the entwined im/mobilities of African and Caribbean migrants who traverse Central American countries in an attempt to reach North America, situating their experiences in a context of globe-spanning migration ‘crises’, regimes and industries. In particular, the project asks to what extent novel conceptualizations of the displacement/emplacement dialectic can be applied to differentiated, drawn-out and volatile migrant trajectories. It builds on a multi-sited ethnographic approach to explore the ambivalent, locally embedded dynamics of displacement and im/mobility, paying specific attention to migrants’ temporary experiences of emplacement in border communities marked by marginalization and state intervention. Conceptually and geographically, the
project enriches pressing debates about both migrant journeys and 'transit' regions across and beyond
the so-called Global South. Methodologically, the project addresses the challenge of 'following' migrants across time and space.
At ISS, I will further develop my research on migrant journeys and other trajectories of im/mobility within communities characterized by translocal linkages, securitization dynamics, and humanitarian initiatives, with the aim of contributing to a substantial de-colonization and de-migranticization of migration-development nexus thinking. In addition, I enjoy integrating my research experience with an interdisciplinary approach to teaching migration and multimethods courses. I also co-organize the Migration Research Seminar Series and the Development Research Series at ISS.
I welcome PhD students with an interest to work on issues related to migration, im/mobility and development; transnational families and translocal livelihoods; migration industries and migrant trajectories; borders and border communities; displacement and place-making; and ‘Othering’.
- H. Drotbohm & N. Winters (2020). The Event in Migrant Categorization: Exploring Eventfulness Across the Americas. Vibrant : VIrtual Brazilian Anthropology, 17, 1-20. doi: 10.1590/1809-43412020v17d650
- N. Winters & C. Mora Izaguirre (2019). Es cosa suya: Entanglements of border externalization and African transit migration in northern Costa Rica. Comparative Migration Studies, 7 (27). doi: 10.1186/s40878-019-0131-9
- N. Winters & F. Reiffen (2019). Haciendo-lugar vía huellas y apegos: las personas migrantes africanas y sus experiencias de movilidad, inmovilidad e inserción local en América Latina. Introduction to the Special Issue ‘Migrantes africanos en América Latina: (in)movilidades y haciendo-lugar’. Revista Interdisciplinar da Mobilidade Humana, 27 (56). doi: 10.1590/1980-85852503880005602
- N. Winters (2019). Haciendo-lugar en tránsito. Reflexión sobre la migración africana y trabajo de campo en Darién, Panamá. Revista Interdisciplinar da Mobilidade Humana, 27 (56). doi: 10.1590/1980-85852503880005613
- N. Winters (2018). Beyond the bird in the cage? Translocal embodiment and trajectories of Nicaraguan female migrants in Seville, Spain. Geoforum. doi: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.05.019
- N. Winters (2017). Embedding remittances: A methodological note on financial diaries in Nicaragua. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 108 (2), 175-189. doi: 10.1111/tesg.12204
- N. Winters (2014). Responsibility, mobility, and power: Translocal carework negotiations of Nicaraguan families. International Migration Review, 48 (2), 415-441. doi: 10.1111/imre.12062
- N. Winters, G. Steel & C. Sosa (2012). Movilidad y desarrollo translocal en la Nicaragua (semi-)rural. Encuentro, 92, 53-72.
- N. Winters, G. Steel & C. Sosa (2011). Mobility, translocal development and the shaping of development corridors in (semi-)rural Nicaragua. International Development Planning Review, 33 (4), 409-428. doi: 10.3828/idpr.2011.21
- N. Winters (2009). ‘No vine para acompañarme, vine para trabajar.’ O cómo las mujeres centroamericanas organizan sus hogares transnacionales en Belice City. Encuentro, 84, 6-20.
- N. Winters, M. Brok & L. de Jong (2005). One foot in narratives, one foot in science. Tijdschrift voor het Landelijk Overleg Vrouwenstudies in de Antropologie, 25 (1), 12-35.
- N. Winters (2015). Las negociaciones acerca del trabajo del cuidado familiar translocal en las familias nicaragüenses: responsabilidad, movilidad y poder. In Rutas de desarrollo en territorios humanos: las dinámicas de la vía láctea en Nicaragua. Managua: UCA Publicaciones
- N. Winters (2020). Displaced lives in the Americas. A review of three cross-border ethnographies. [Bespreking van de boeken Contraband Corridor : Making a Living at the Mexico--Guatemala Border & Lives in transit : violence and intimacy on the migrant journey & The migrant passage : clandestine journeys from Central America]. European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 213-218. [go to publisher's site] doi: 10.32992/erlacs.10675
- H. Drotbohm & N. Winters (2018). Transnational lives en route. African trajectories of displacement and emplacement across Central America.
- N. Winters & E. Reichl (2020). Pay and go? Transit migration regimes and migrant navigation in Central America. (blog). (available: 9 Apr 2020).
- F. Reiffen & N. Winters (2018). Care in crisis: Ethnographic perspectives on humanitarianism – Conference Report. (blog). (available: 23 Mar 2018).
- N. Winters (2018). Redrawing the Central American Migrant Caravan: How Other (African) Trajectories Cross Its Path. (blog). (available: 6 Nov 2018).
4.1 Governance of Migration & Diversity
- Title
- 4.1 Governance of Migration & Diversity
- Year
- 2020
3105 Research Paper Preparation
- Title
- 3105 Research Paper Preparation
- Year
- 2020
4270 Migration and Development
- Title
- 4270 Migration and Development
- Year
- 2020
3201 Multimethod Social Dev. Research
- Title
- 3201 Multimethod Social Dev. Research
- Year
- 2020
4271 People on the move?
- Title
- 4271 People on the move?
- Year
- 2020
Assistant Professor
- University
- Erasmus University Rotterdam
- School
- International Institute of Social Studies (ISS)
- Department
- Academic staff unit
- Telephone
- 070426 0561