With the support of a small grant from the Illinois Tech Department of Humanities, Patrick Ireland, Professor of Political Science, completed the field research this past March for a project begun during his last sabbatical in AY 2014-2015 that compares the presence and effects of West African migrants in urban spaces in Dakar, Tangier, and Barcelona: how urban development policies shape their lives and livelihoods and, in turn, how they challenge and alter the sociopolitical context, raising questions about rights, membership, and lived diversity. Since July, he has been a Fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study in South Africa, writing up the study results.

An American Institute of Indian Studies Senior Scholarly/Professional Development Fellowship will allow Ireland to spend six months from January to July 2024 extending to India his previous comparative research assessing the measures that the Philippine and Sri Lankan governments have taken to protect and defend their nationals laboring abroad as female domestic migrant workers. His intention is also to explore the nature and implications of subnational migration governance by comparing the responses of the states of Kerala and Andhra Pradesh.