LaRosa Publishes New Book on Immigration from Latin America to the United States

head and shoulder image of Michael LaRosa

Dr. Michael LaRosa, associate professor of history at Rhodes College, is a leading expert on Latin American history and culture. His latest book, co-written with Rhodes alumnus Bryce Ashby, is titled Immigration, Policy and the People of Latin America: Seven Sending Nations and will be released Nov. 20 by Routledge.

This book examines the migration of Latin America’s inhabitants to the United States through case studies from seven nations—Colombia, Cuba, Haiti, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, and Venezuela. Rhodes students also contributed to some of the chapters.

David Lubell, founder and director emeritus of Welcoming America, a nonprofit organization in Atlanta, GA, wrote: This book expertly captures the complex 'push' factors that drive immigration in much of the Americas, and brilliantly places them in their unique historical and political context by using a comparative, country-by-country approach. To contextualize these forces further, Ashby and LaRosa have focused—refreshingly—on the lives and journeys of individual immigrants. Lifting up this human dimension is essential for a full comprehension of the phenomena of migration and opens our hearts to the impacts these forces have on individuals, families, and communities.

LaRosa has also organized and will moderate a panel discussion “Migration of People and Places with a Look toward Latin America” on Nov. 20 at 11 a.m. in the Spence Wilson Room on campus. Ashby, who was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Honduras for two years after graduating from Rhodes in 2000 and is now a Memphis attorney, will be on the panel. Other panelists are Dr. Amy Risley, professor of international studies at Rhodes, who will discuss an upcoming course at Rhodes on immigration, and Mauricio Calvo, executive director at Latino Memphis, Inc., who will speak on immigration from Latin America to Memphis.

Members from the Memphis community who want to attend the panel discussion should register at https://fs22.formsite.com/webmanagerrhodesedu/0d20ykwmh0/index

LaRosa joined the history department at Rhodes in 1995 after completing a Ph.D. at the University of Miami, and during his career he has produced a significant body of scholarship including book chapters,  essays, articles, book reviews, and encyclopedia entries about Latin American history and culture as well as U.S.-Latin American relations.

In addition, LaRosa has received grants for his research from many organizations including the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Fulbright program. He is the 2019 recipient of Rhodes’ Clarence Day Award for Outstanding Research, which is the college’s highest faculty honor for research.