Friday, November 7, 2025
12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. EST
Location: Mortara Center Building Conference Room
The Georgetown Americas Institute invites you to a conversation about the intersection of migration and music. This event will explore the powerful relationship between migration patterns and the rising popularity of regional Mexican music in the United States. Speakers will address the ways in which music both reflects and drives the experiences of diaspora, identity, and generational change. They will explore how Mexican migration has influenced the development and diffusion of regional music styles in the United States and why regional Mexican music is resonating with younger, more diverse audiences today. Speakers will also look into the role that streaming platforms, social media, and borderland identities play in this cultural shift. Please join Anamaria Sayre, co-host of Alt.Latino and producer for NPR’s Tiny Desk, to discuss these questions and more in a conversation moderated by Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute.
This event is sponsored by the Georgetown Americas Institute and the Georgetown Institute for the Study of International Migration.
Featuring
Anamaria Artemisa Sayre is co-host of Alt.Latino and a curator and producer for Tiny Desk. As a podcast, radio, and video host, reporter, and producer for NPR, she is focused on elevating the diversity of sounds and stories that define Latinx culture. She's interviewed artists, from Santana to Rosalia, that span generations and the globe and is a trusted voice on one of the most genre-diverse subsets of music in the world. Additionally, she curates Latin music at the Tiny Desk. This includes leading the annual Latin Music Month Tiny Desk takeover which she conceived of and realized within her first year at NPR. Sayre's producing credits include concerts from artists like Nicki Nicole, Ivy Queen, Karol G, and Juanes. Her hosting and reporting credits are spread across NPR stations and beyond, and they include frequent hosting on NPR Music's All Songs Considered, reporting a weekly segment on NPR's Morning Edition, and a regular segment on Here and Now. She is NPR's youngest host and has been named a 30 under 30 professional by Forbes and a Major Mujer by Remezcla. Originally from southern California, she's an avid lover of mountains, beaches, and stories that pair best with a cafecito in her abuela's backyard.
Andrew Selee is president of the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), a global nonpartisan institution that seeks to improve immigration and integration policies through fact-based research, opportunities for learning and dialogue, and the development of new ideas to address complex policy questions, a position he assumed in 2017. He also chairs MPI Europe's Administrative Council. Selee’s research focuses on migration globally, with a special emphasis on immigration policies in the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean. He is the author of several books, including, most recently, Vanishing Frontiers: The Forces Driving Mexico and the United States Together (2018) and What Should Think Tanks Do? A Strategic Guide to Policy Impact (2013). He has published opinion articles in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and Americas Quarterly, and he contributes a regular column to Mexico’s largest newspaper, El Universal. He is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, teaching courses on global migration, and has previously taught at Johns Hopkins and George Washington universities and been a visiting scholar at El Colegio de México. He holds a Ph.D. in policy studies from the University of Maryland; an M.A. in Latin American studies from the University of California, San Diego; a B.A., Phi Beta Kappa, from Washington University in St. Louis; and a certificate in strategic perspectives on nonprofit management from Harvard Business School.