Research with an Impact: Latina Futures 2050 Lab-funded Projects Are Creating Change Far Beyond California

By Sandra Baltazar Martínez

 

The impact of research findings by scholars and researchers from California colleges, universities, and community organizations, is boundless.  

 

For over two years, dozens of experts supported by Latina Futures 2050 Lab have been leading above-standard research projects that document the lives of Latinas — and all women and girls — on issues that include health care access, educational attainment, wage discrepancies, and housing. 

 

Latina Futures, an initiative spearheaded by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC), was created in 2022 in collaboration with the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute (LPPI). Funded by a $15 million California state budget allocation, Latina Futures seeks to increase knowledge and insight through applied policy research on the contours of the economic, political, and social lives of Latinas living in the United States over the next several decades.

 

 

Bernardette Pinetta, assistant professor of psychology at UC Riverside, has been working with various partners focused on the wellbeing and leadership development of high school and college students, including Hispanas Organized for Political Equality (HOPE). This collaboration resulted in a community engagement format known as critical inquiry groups, a series of youth-facilitated conversations that led ot the development of a comprehensive 14-lesson curriculum plan focused on strengthening Latina teens’ identity development and sociopolitical awareness. This curriculum will soon be available online, free of cost, for educators and the general public.  

 

 

Pinetta’s interest in Latinas in research led to working alongside Adriana Aldana, associate professor and developmental psychologist with the College of Health, Human Services and Nursing at Cal State University, Dominguez Hills, and Josefina Bañales, assistant professor of community and applied developmental psychology at the University of Illinois, Chicago. This project led to the establishment of the Collective for Healing and Research-Led Action (CHARLA) Network that brings together Latina scholars across university institutions who engage in youth and community participatory action research methods. The project also supported Bañales’s students, who launched their second season of “Latinas in Research” podcast on Spotify.

 

To learn more about Pinetta’s research, visit her website: Leveraging Identities to Build Resistance and Empowerment Lab (LIBRE Lab).

 

Latina Futures has also amplified the work of Daisy Verduzco Reyes, associate professor of sociology at UC Merced. Her latest research paper, “Complicating Upward Mobility: Latinx College-educated Millennials Reflect on Life After Graduation,” was recently published in the journal Sociology of Race and Ethnicity. Through her analysis, Reyes found a new way millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) auto-define success: having enough income to financially support their parents. 

 

The United States’ definition of adult achievement, known by sociologists as Standard North American Adulthood, or SNAA, means fulfilling five stages: leaving home, finishing college, entering the workforce, getting married, and having children. Unlike SNAA, for Mexican American millennials, a successful adult is defined by a much broader goal, which includes lifting their families’ social and financial status. In conducting interviews and analyzing her findings, Reyes coined the term “Latinx mobility bargain” that explains how Latinx college graduates define economic upward mobility, unlike the SNAA.

 

“I wanted to focus on Latinx college graduate millennials because as researchers we do not have much documented data and analysis to help us see and understand the lives of this population. The voices and self-reflections of Latinx descendants of immigrants matter, yet are rarely examined,” said Reyes, noting that 85% of respondents were the first in their family to attend and graduate from college and 96% were of Mexican origin. 

 

Among Reyes’s questions to participants: “Do you think you have achieved mobility relative to your parents?” and “Do you provide financially for anyone?” Responses varied from millennials whose annual earnings of $150,000-$200,000 have allowed them to purchase a home for their parents, plus pay utilities and groceries, to those who see themselves in a stagnant situation primarily because they hold low-paying jobs.

 

“It is worth noting, however, that the one idea that none of the respondents questioned was the cultural imperative of the immigrant bargain,” Reyes said. “Some might expect this ‘burden’ to feed resentment, but none of my respondents expressed any such feelings. The narratives here show that for many Latinx millennials, providing for parents has constrained their mobility trajectories, leaving less resources for their own capital development. Yet, this constraint is simultaneously perceived an accomplishment. It is not uncommon for children of immigrants to serve in more adult roles in their families like translators, caregivers, and sometimes, laborers. Many begin their economic support within their families early on.”

 

Sayil Camacho, Latina Futures 2050 Lab Scholar in Residence, is the principal investigator of a study on COVID-19 vaccine access in all 50 states. Her study, “The English-Only Nature of Vaccine Deservedness and Harms of Racialized Administrative Burdens,” was published in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities in June. Findings highlight both macro-level communication infrastructure and micro-level interactions that contribute to ongoing disparities in health care access. 

 

Specifically focused on COVID-19 vaccine access, Camacho and her research team found that “despite extensive efforts to facilitate COVID-19 vaccine access and achieve a 70% vaccination rate, race-based disparities and barriers to vaccine access continue to persist in the United States. To investigate discrimination among Limited-English Proficient (LEP) populations, Camacho and her team conducted a paired audit test field experiment. Testers with identical gender and immigration status, but differing in racial and language profiles, inquired about vaccine access in all 50 states through the Department of Health and major vaccine sites, using phone, email, and web-based chat communication. The results show that Spanish-speaking testers faced additional systemic barriers, were more likely to encounter overt racialized and judgmental language, and experienced heightened scrutiny regarding their identity.”

 

Camacho is founding director of the Institute for the Public and Social Good and is currently a fellow with Mosaic Changemakers.

 

Carla Salazar Gonzalez, a Just Migrant Futures postdoctoral scholar at UC San Diego’s Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, examines the lives of Central American asylum-seeking women and mothers who along with their attorneys and advocates, negotiate and are affected by the laws and immigration policies surrounding borders and asylum. 

 

Gonzalez’s dissertation asks: How and why are mothers sent to Mexico (at the U.S.-Mexico border) despite seeking asylum in the U.S.? What are the implications and consequences of restrictive immigration policies and laws, such as asylum law? Her research leverages insights from 14 months of participant observations at an immigrant-serving organization, Al Otro Lado (AOL), and 125 interviews with Honduran, Guatemalan, and Salvadoran mothers in Tijuana seeking asylum in the U.S.

 

Gonzalez’s mixed-methods research agenda seeks to generate greater understanding of the implications and consequences of immigration border policies and laws on immigrant populations and their families within and outside of the U.S. Her research is supported by Latina Futures as well as other entities, including by a Fulbright Fellowship, the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, the American Sociological Association’s Minority Fellowship Program, Russell Sage Foundation, among others. 

 

Gonzalez is currently submitting her work to academic journals and has begun to outline a forthcoming book.

 

Documenting and archiving history is also a big part of Latina Futures’ mission. Krystell Jiménez, Latina Futures librarian and archivist, has been focused on processing and collections management for the CSRC’s Library’s women’s and LGBTQ+ collections. Meanwhile, Yesenia Román, Latina Futures digital projects librarian has digitized, cataloged, and published all documents from the Virginia Espino Sterilization Papers pertaining to the 1978 Madrigal vs. Quilligan lawsuit, resulting in approximately 4,000 scans and around 325 documents. Much of this work is now digitally available at the CSRC Library.

 

The CSRC Library is a regular lender to museums and galleries around the world. In June, the exhibition On the Side of Angels: Latina Lesbian Activism co-curated by Vanessa Esperanza Quintero and Jocelyne Sanchez and featuring CSRC archival materials, welcomed more than 250 visitors at its opening night at the Vincent Price Art Museum (VPAM) at East Los Angeles College (ELAC). Labor rights activist icon Dolores Huerta was among the guests. 

 

The exhibition, on view through August 30, showcases photography, posters, magazines, and video footage from the collections of policy and civil rights advocate Laura Esquivel, tenant rights attorney Elena Popp, and archivist, herstorian, and former CSRC librarian Yolanda Retter Vargas. While the materials on view primarily reflect Los Angeles-based activism from the 1980s to the late 2000s, they also reveal how local organizing was often in active dialogue with broader national and transnational movements.

 

The exhibition’s title pays homage to Retter Vargas’s dissertation, “On the Side of Angels: Lesbian Activism in Los Angeles, 1970-1990,” completed at the University of New Mexico in 1999. Retter Vargas was an instrumental figure in diversifying archival collections across Los Angeles. During her tenure at the CSRC, she notably expanded the archives to include the papers of Esquivel and Popp.

 

As a closing day event for this popular exhibition, VPAM has organized a screening of the PBS documentary UNIDAD: Gay & Lesbian Latinos Unidos on Saturday, August 30 at 2 p.m., followed by a panel discussion featuring several speakers, including Esquivel and Popp. The film chronicles events at a pivotal time in the history of LGBTQ equality, women’s rights, and civil rights movements that shaped the destinies of communities supported by Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos, or GLLU, a political and social group formed in 1981 in Los Angeles. The event is free and open to the public. RSVP online for this event.

 

Praise for On the Side of Angels: