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Chicano Studies Research Center

CSRC Research Grants

2015-16

Other Years:

This project aims to study the role of the colonial Puerto Ricans in achieving a relatively egalitarian formulation before the federal state in the early 1900s. Through archival research, Ayala hopes to answer questions related to the granting of race-based political rights, specifically regarding the different positions of the local elites and of the labor movement regarding the franchise.

Funds will provide support to produce a book of 14 academic and autobiographical essays written by mixed-race graduate and undergraduate students at UCLA. The manuscript, Being Mixed Race at UCLA, “examines the Asian-Latina experience through the lens of Critical Race Theory, the multi-ethnic Filipino experience, the 2014 UCLA Multiethnic Diversity Pilot Study, and mixed race student community organizing.”

This project aims to understand how the personal histories, worldviews, and pedagogies of Latina mothers of English learners inform their engagement in the Rancho los Nietos Unified School District’s English Language Advisory Committee (DELAC). Bringing to the forefront the insights and standpoints of these Latinas, Porras’s findings have the potential to transform ways in which policymakers and practitioners understand, relate to, and create reciprocal partnerships with mothers of English learners in schools and districts, a critical component to the success of California’s new collaborative finance education law known as the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF).

Supported in part by the Tamar Diana Wilson Fund

Funds were awarded for the continued exploration of 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.  This project will “elucidate how race and class impact the socioeconomic trajectories of later generation Mexican-Americans, and how their socioeconomic trajectories compare to Whites” through interviews and surveys of later-generation Mexicans.

Supported in part by the Tamar Diana Wilson Fund

Researching political activism engaged by Latina/o undocuqueers is part of an emerging field of queer migration studies within ethnic studies. This project will study the Trail of Dreams event in 2010, a 1,500-mile trek embarked upon by four undocumented students, who walked from Miami to Washington D.C., visiting major cities along the way. Through interviews, Solorzano will seek to understand how Latina/o undocuqueer voices helped shape knowledge about the fight for migrant rights at that time in the South. The project’s objective is to show a “recasting” of political activism at the intersection of queer rights, justice, and immigration rights, one that seeks to incorporate “inclusionary” perspectives.

This project examines a contemporary intersection of citizenship, incorporation, and racialization by studying Puerto Ricans in Orlando, Florida. Because Puerto Ricans do not encounter barriers to enter the mainland, and yet, “like other migrants, they cross cultural, linguistic, and political boundaries”, Valle argues that Puerto Ricans are an ideal subject through which to study citizenship, incorporation, and racialization “frameworks”. Valle will interview 120 Puerto Ricans in Orlando in her attempt to examine a set of factors–phenotype, gender, education, and nativity–which has not been previously explored for this group or in this location.