Jorge G. Durand

Over the last three decades Durand has been most concerned with the migration between Mexico and the United States, chiefly with co-director Douglas S. Massey on the Mexican Migration Project. With survey data gathered by the Mexican Migration Project he has investigated the socioeconomic consequences of long-term Mexican migration to the United States, as well as the growth of permanent immigrant communities in the United States. The Mexican Migration Project began in 1982, where he worked with various other scientists to further their understanding of the multi-faceted process of Mexican migration to the United States. Birthed from the success of that project (also co-directed by Jorge G. Durand and Douglas S. Massey) is the Latin American Migration Project, an initiative founded in 1998 that is an extension of the MMP (Mexican Migration Project). The difference between the two is that the Latin American Migration Project broadens the scope of the multi-disciplinary study to the migration patterns of other Latin American countries.

Serving a large part as co-director in the Mexican Migration Project, he partially oversaw the organization of research strategies.The data collection for this project borrowed from anthropological and sociological research methods, particularly ethnosurveying (survey sampling coupled with ethnographic field work). The survey material specifically records general demographic, migratory, working/non-working, and relationship information for individual households, culminating in one of the most concise and vast datasets of Mexico-US migration in existence. Further, the Mexican Migration Project has also compiled data over the past few decades on the economics of Mexico-US migration, specifically the cost of crossing the border and even the prevalence of access to border crossing guides from dates as far back as 1965 (findable on the MMP database)

Jorge Guillermo Durand Arp-Nisen (born 1949 in Lima, Peru) is a research professor of anthropology at the University of Guadalajara and the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE). He is co-director with Douglas S. Massey on the Mexican Migration Project. (since 1987) and the Latin American Migration Project (since 1996), sponsored by the universities of Princeton and Guadalajara. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society, National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In Mexico, he is a member of the National System of Researchers (Level III) of the Mexican Academy of Sciences. Further, he has been granted the Guggenheim Fellowship for Social Sciences award in the Latin American & Caribbean Competition, as well as the Bronislaw Malinowski Award by the Society for Applied Anthropology.