Bio:
Roy Germano is a senior research scholar and adjunct associate professor at New York University. He holds in a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. in international relations from the University of Chicago. He made The Other Side of Immigration while collecting survey data in rural Mexico as a National Science Foundation Fellow.
Roy is also an author. His new book is called Outsourcing Welfare: How the Money Immigrants Send Home Contributes to Stability in Developing Countries (Oxford University Press). His research has appeared in a number of scholarly journals, including Migration Studies, Latino Studies, Research & Politics, Perspectives on Politics, the NYU Law Review, Electoral Studies, and others. He has contributed to a variety of media outlets, including CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, Univision, Telemundo, and many others.
His other documentary films include A Mexican Sound and Immigrant America, which was broadcast by Vice News.
Roy Germano's Outsourcing Welfare shows how international migrants have assumed a social welfare burden once reserved for national governments. The hundreds of billions of dollars they send to their home countries each year helps millions of families pay for food, healthcare, housing, and education. This money--known as "remittances"--is three times larger than aid sent by the world's richest countries. It fills an important welfare gap throughout the developing world in an era of austerity and neoliberal globalization. Based on ethnographic research in Mexico and Central American and analyses of survey data from 50 countries in Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Middle East. Published in 2018 by Oxford University Press.
An "illuminating book" that "addresses an important but often overlooked consequence of international migration"
- Richard N. Cooper, Foreign Affairs
"In the present political climate, it is difficult not to read Roy Germano's book as a warning. With the rise in nationalistic rhetoric in some wealthy democracies focused on erecting barriers to migration, Outsourcing Welfare points to the serious harm that building walls may cause to people living in poorer states."
- Michael Tyburski, Perspectives on Politics
“A major contribution to the field...the first comprehensive study on the relationship between remittances and political behavior.”
- David Doyle, University of Oxford
“Germano is masterful in making us see immigration ‘from the other side.'”
- Douglas S. Massey, Princeton University
THE OTHER SIDE OF IMMIGRATION
An award-winning documentary by Roy Germano about why millions of Mexicans have immigrated to the U.S. in recent decades and what has happened to the families and communities they left behind. Through an approach that is both subtle and thought-provoking, The Other Side of Immigration provides a perspective on undocumented immigration rarely witnessed by American eyes, challenging audiences to imagine more creative and effective solutions. A 2011 American Library Association Notable Video and invited selection at hundreds of film festivals, museums, universities, and community events.
“The Other Side of Immigration does more than any other work to give people otherwise disparaged as ‘threatening’ and ‘illegal’ a human face and to reveal the devastating personal effects of U.S. immigration and economic policies on our closest neighbors.”
- Douglas S. Massey, Princeton University
“The Other Side of Immigration is an intelligent, thought-provoking, beautiful, and caring look at the costs of policies in Mexico and the United States that lead to illegal immigration by so many. It is an understatement to say that the film has made me think...”
- Liza Finkel, Portland State University
“I recommend The Other Side of Immigration with enthusiasm for a wide range of audiences, including community groups, higher education institutions, public schools, and policy makers.”
- Scott Fletcher, Lewis & Clark College
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).