Maria Teresa Santos is a PhD candidate (Migrations, Human Geography) at IGOT-Ulisboa. With nearly 20 years of experience in managing European Union and Portuguese cooperation projects mostly in Portuguese Speaking African Countries and East-Timor and a MSc in Development Studies from SOAS, University of London, she now turns her focus to the European continent and specifically to the relation between migration and development within the European Union space.
PhD Candidate: Migrations, Human Geography
Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning (IGOT), University of Lisbon (UL)
In her PhD research, she takes as her point of departure the destruction of the imaginary frontier that separates the underdeveloped global south from the developed global north by placing the migration and development debate within the uneven geographical development of the European Union. In particular, she intends to research the contribution of Portuguese migrants in Germany to the development of Portugal and its regions. Using the lenses of critical realism, social space theory and political economy analysis, she reflects on both commonalities and differences between migrants' and non-migrants actions restructuring space and scale processes under neoliberalism.
Keywords: uneven geographical development, global North