CSRC Research Grants, 2014-2015
UCLA Carwash Industry Study – Phase 2
Principal Investigator: Abel Valenzuela, UCLA Department of Urban Planning and Cesar E. Chavez Center for Chicana and Chicano Studies
Funds will provide support to uncover the complexity of the immigrant employer/immigrant employee relationship in Southern California carwashes that act as both sites of immigrant opportunity for many foreign-born small business owners, and sites of immigrant subjugation for the predominantly foreign born Latino workforce.
Supported in part by the Tamar Diana Wilson Fund
Latino Cultures Network
Principal Investigator: Marissa K. López, UCLA Department of English and Chicana/o Studies
IAC funds were awarded for the continued development and future implementation of the Latino Cultures Network website. This project was conceptualized as a collaboration of faculty with different expertise across different UC campuses with the goal of creating and sustaining an open access digital platform to link and host different cultural manifestations.
Appalachia Meets Aztlan: A New Destination of Mexican Immigration after the Great Recession
Principal Investigator: Ruben Hernandez-Leon, UCLA Department of Sociology
With a focus on Mexican immigration to the “carpet capital of the world” in Dalton (Georgia) during the 1990s and 2000s, IAC funds will support two different research dimensions of this project: 1) How are Mexican immigrants and their Mexican-American offspring coping with the aftermath of the great recession?” and 2) What is the long-term impact of Mexican immigration on inter-ethnic relations in Dalton and how has Mexican immigration redrawn ethno racial boundaries in the town and surrounding region?” through interviews with Dalton workers, business owners, elected officials, teachers, and others.
Supported in part by the Tamar Diana Wilson Fund
Mexican Americans in New Mexico: Race, Class and Mobility
Principal Investigator: Cassandra Salgado, PhD student, UCLA Department of Sociology
This project will explore the ways in which people of Mexican extraction in this country experience marginalization in Albuquerque, in essence looking at the evolution of White-Mexican American socioeconomic disparities. More to the point, this project will “elucidate how race and class impact the socioeconomic trajectories of later generation Mexican-Americans, and how their socioecomic trajectories compare to Whites” through interviews and surveys of later-generation Mexicans.
Supported in part by the Tamar Diana Wilson Fund
Patrolling Territorial Borders, Negotiating symbolic Boundaries: A Case Study of Mexican American Immigration Agents
Principal Investigator: Irene Vega, PhD student, UCLA Department of Sociology
Funds will support this project to “shed light on this irony by examining the interplay between immigration politics and policy implementation, as well as the unintended social consequences of racial equality in federal and state-level bureaucracies” through interviews and ethnographic observations along the Mexico-Arizona border.
Home-School Cultural Value Conflicts as a Causal Influence in Reducing Academic Persistence and Well-Being Among Latino First-Generation College Students
Principal Investigator: Yolanda Vasquez Salgado, PhD student, UCLA Department of Psychology
This project will attempt to demonstrate, via a laboratory experiment with Latino students, that home/school “cultural value conflicts are a causal influence in reducing both academic persistence and well-being,” the latter measured by psychological tests’ constructs. Methodologically this project follows a randomized-controlled trial model. This study will be the first to show a causal link between home-school cultural value conflict and a reduction in academic persistence and well-being.
Supported in part by the Carlos M. Haro Scholarship Fund