2013 Festival of Scholars
Global Studies Presentations
| Date: | Wednesday, April 25 |
| Time: | 3:00pm - 4:00pm |
| Location: | Roth Nelson Room |
Description: |
In this session, first generation college students who have been working on a research project of undocumented students with Dr. Yasuike will talk about some preliminary findings and their research experiences. The research explores the impact of growing up without legal status on their social lives, educational experiences, identity development and social activism. |
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Student Abstracts at this Session
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Student(s): Mira Brown Faculty Mentor: Dr. Akiko Yasuike |
Ethnic Identity Construction of Indigenous Immigrants From MexicoThis research seeks to identify way that indigenous Mexican immigrants construct their identity in a community organization setting. There are large and often overlooked populations of such groups living in Southern California; as many as 50,000 Mixtecos are employed in agriculture in California during harvest times, and between 15,000 and 20,000 Zapotecos can be found in the Los Angeles area and San Diego County. Understanding what factors contribute to the construction of identity will be helpful for the organizations working with the immigrants. The methods used in this research include site visits and one-on-one interviews with individuals found through websites of organizations, and then through the snowball effect. The research has shown that participation in the organizations leads to a strengthened sense of ethnic pride as indigenous Oaxacans, as opposed to an identification based solely on a village as occurs in Oaxaca. |
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Student(s): Lynzi Tarango and Mari Bolanos, Rocio Ayala Faculty Mentor: Dr. Akiko Yasuike |
Children of a Global Age: What Can We Learn From the Stories of Undocumented Students?The research team led by Dr. Yasuike started to examine the impact of growing up without legal status on social life, educational experiences, identity development and social activism in summer 2011. Though the public protest against the current immigration policy by undocumented college students has attracted a media attention, how the lack of legal status affected their upbringing has not been fully examined. Based on 6 in-depth interviews with undocumented individuals who are currently enrolled in or graduated from universities, our preliminary findings identify several common experiences: Isolation and stigma management, lowering one’s aspiration, support from teachers and programs in applying for college and college education as empowerment. Student researchers share the impact of their involvement in the research on their lives. |
