About the Latin America and Caribbean Initiative

The Latin America and Caribbean Initiative (LACI) was launched in 2018 to make sense of a rapidly changing migration landscape and to generate practical ideas for managing diverse mobility while harnessing its benefits. LACI combines rigorous, policy-relevant research with direct engagement with decisionmakers to help governments and institutions build functional migration systems that are orderly, rights respecting, and aligned with broader development goals.

"Home to roughly 8 percent of the world's population, the region generates approximately 15 percent of all international migrants globally."

LACI’s work centers on five core areas:

• Migration and development: Demonstrating how well governed mobility can be a powerful development tool, from building human capital and stimulating investment to fostering innovation and strengthening communities beyond remittances alone.
• Legal pathways and labor mobility: Designing orderly migration channels that respond to labor market needs, including through private sector partnerships and employer led schemes.
• Integration, return, and reintegration: Advancing evidence based approaches to the social, economic, and civic inclusion of migrants, and the sustainable reintegration of returnees for the benefit of migrants and communities alike.
• Social cohesion and inclusive societies: Helping create the conditions for migrants, host communities, indigenous and Afro descendant populations, and returnees to coexist productively and equitably.
• Regional and hemispheric cooperation: Supporting shared governance frameworks that align sending, transit, and receiving countries around common interests and responsibilities.

One of the world’s most dynamic migration regions, Latin America and the Caribbean is shaped by a set of intersecting challenges that have given rise to cutting-edge policy experimentation and innovation. Home to roughly 8 percent of the world's population, the region generates approximately 15 percent of all international migrants globally. A combination of factors—from rapid urbanization to climate change to conflict —create complex dynamics of emigration, immigration, and transit within the same hemisphere. Many countries manage all three at once.

LACI engages governments, regional bodies, international organizations, donors, civil society, and the private sector to deliver policy analysis, technical assistance, and facilitated dialogue. It draws on MPI's global comparative expertise to develop solutions that are politically feasible, institutionally grounded, and calibrated to the region's specific and rapidly evolving contexts.