María Gabriela is a development economist, currently Assistant Professor at the Institute for History of Leiden University. She holds a PhD in Development Studies from Erasmus University Rotterdam and degrees from the Universitat de València and Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador. Her research explores the political economy of poverty, social policy, and migration in Latin America, with a particular focus on exclusionary welfare systems, informality, and the governance of precarity across borders. Drawing on ethnographic, econometric, and historical methods, she interrogates how inequality is reproduced and resisted in contexts shaped by neoliberalism and securitisation.
The price of compliance
05/07/2025
Ecuador leapt into the global economy seeking economic development but found only dependency. María Gabriela Palacio Ludeña writes. At Guayaquil airport, Ecuadorians disembark from deportation flights, some wearing ankle monitors
