Activities

“This has been an excellent interdisciplinary opportunity to learn from colleagues about their work, receive feedback, and engage in collaborative research. I plan to encourage this type of academic community-engaged opportunity in my own School and look forward to other opportunities to build on Latinx scholarship.”

-Robert Ortega

The UM Latinx Working Group met regularly to advance research on Latinx youth and families. Artifacts of these meetings are housed here in the Working Group Activities Archive. During its first year, the Working Group hosted a panel highlighting the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. After a brief hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the working group returned in 2021 with a series of interdisciplinary guest speakers to engage with academic work from other institutions and to foster critical reflection, networking, and collaboration.

PUERTO RICAN FLORIDA: POST-HURRICANE MIGRATION, INTEGRATION, AND PARTICIPATION PANEL

In April of 2019, the UM Latinx Working Group hosted Puerto Rican Florida: Migration, Integration, and Participation, a panel discussion highlighting the work of trailblazing scholars researching the lived experiences of Puerto Ricans following Hurricane Maria.

In September of 2017, hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, leaving residents with limited access to water, electricity, and communication. An estimated 135,000 people fled the island in the aftermath of the hurricane—many of them after losing everything. A large share of displaced families relocated to Florida, a state that has recently become the epicenter of the new Puerto Rican Diaspora.

In this panel, scholars from different fields explored the implications of the post-hurricane migration of Puerto Rican families to Florida. The conversation engaged with questions about the impact of this post-hurricane migration on the demographics of the state; its implications for educational institutions serving hurricane-displaced Puerto Rican students; and its potential effects on the much-discussed political landscape. The following presentations were offered:

After María: The Puerto Rican Exodus to Florida | Jorge Duany, Florida International University

This presentation begins by reviewing the most recent estimates of Puerto Rican migration to the United States, particularly to Florida and especially to the Orlando metropolitan area. Then it assesses the demographic and economic repercussions of large-scale migration from Puerto Rico. Finally, the presentation analyzes the reproduction of the cultural identities of Puerto Rican migrants through food traditions, language preferences, musical and religious practices, and public festivals.

The Educational Transitions and Experiences of Hurricane-Displaced Puerto Rican Students | Enid Rosario-Ramos, & Awilda Rodriguez, University of Michigan

In the aftermath of hurricanes Irma and Maria, Orange County Public Schools (OCPS) in Florida received approximately 3,500 students from PR; with some schools enrolling over 180 new students. Although this district has a tradition of receiving families who are relocating due to environmental disasters or geopolitical strife, the magnitude, rapidity, and circumstances under which families relocated from PR placed a strain on the district that shaped timely instructional and programmatic decision-making. This presentation will discuss the findings of a research project that aimed to understand the educational transitions and disruptions of displaced Puerto Rican high school students and their families, as well as assess the district's response to the massive enrollment of hurricane-displaced students.

The Shifting Meaning of Latinx Politics in Post-Hurricane Florida | Mara Ostfeld, University of Michigan

As the state with the third most electoral votes, and tiny margins of victory, Florida is one of the most influential states in American electoral politics. Even a small concentration of voters in this state is sufficient to earn attention on the national political agenda. Today, Puerto Ricans make up a third of eligible Latinx voters in the state, a number that equals that of the heavily sought Cuban-American electorate in Florida. Yet how will this affect Florida politics? This presentation will discuss the patterns of political engagement among the growing Puerto Rican electorate in Florida, as well as how candidates and elected officials are responding to their growing political weight.

4-19-19 Puerto-Rico Seminar.mp4

“As a Latina graduate student, I’ve had very few opportunities to engage with Latinx faculty so being in a space created, facilitated, and filled with Latinx faculty was such a beautiful experience. Not only did it bolster my sense of belonging in academia, it further motivated me to think about ways we can promote institutional change by building collaborative and justice-oriented spaces.”

-Bernardette Pinetta

Guest Speakers

Guest speakers were invited to share their work with Latinx youth and families in order to provoke discussion amongst our interdisciplinary group of faculty. The following guest speakers shared their work during at least one Working Group meeting.

Cynthia García Coll, Ph.D.

Dr. Cynthia García Coll is a Professor in the Clinical Ph.D. program and Associate Director of the Institutional Center for Scientific Research at Albizu University in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her research focuses on the interplay of sociocultural and biological influences on child development, with emphasis on populations under risk conditions and children of color. Dr. García Coll has researched a number of topics, including the resilience of children born to teen mothers and of immigrant children. She has also explored the immigrant paradox, which shows that first-generation immigrant children and adolescents tend to be better adjusted academically and behaviorally than later assimilated generations. She has received research funding from the National Institute of Health and the McArthur, Spencer, Gates and WT Grant Foundations. She has also received numerous awards and recognition for her work from the American Psychological Association (APA), the Society for Research in Child Development, the Society for Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, Tufts University and Brown University. She has served on the editorial boards of leading academic journals, including Development and Psychopathology, Infant Behavior and Development, Infancy and Human Development, and is the former editor-in-chief of Child Development.

Selected publication: García Coll C, Ferrer KL. Zigler's conceptualization of diversity: Implications for the early childhood development workforce. Dev Psychopathol. 2021 May;33(2):483-492. doi: 10.1017/S0954579420001960. PMID: 33551017.

Cati de los Ríos, Ph.D

Dr. Cati V. de los Ríos is an Assistant Professor of Literacy, Reading and Bi/Multilingual Education at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education. Dr. de los Ríos is a proud fourth-generation literacy educator and comes from a long lineage of normalistas in Mexico. She spent six years teaching in Massachusetts and California public schools as a Spanish, English Language Development (ELD) and Ethnic Studies high school teacher. Her research on youths’ translingual, musical and civic literacies has been supported by the Ford Foundation, National Academy of Education/Spencer, and National Council of Teachers of English. Dr. de los Ríos was recently the recipient of the Arthur Applebee Award for Excellence in Research on Literacy as well as the Early Career Achievement Award from the Literacy Research Association. Her recent articles can be found in Applied Linguistics, Reading Research Quarterly, Journal of Literacy Research, and Harvard Educational Review.

Select Publication: De Los RÍos, C. V. (2019). “Los Músicos”: Mexican Corridos, the Aural Border, and the Evocative Musical Renderings of Transnational Youth. Harvard Educational Review, 89(2), 177–200. https://doi.org/10.17763/1943-5045-89.2.177

Michael Jones-Correa, Ph.D.

Dr. Michael Jones-Correa (PhD Princeton) is the President’s Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Immigration (CSERI) at the University of Pennsylvania. He previously taught at Harvard and Cornell, where he served as the Robert J. Katz Chair of the Department of Government from 2014-2016. He is a co-author of Holding Fast: Resilience and Civic Engagement among Latino Immigrants (Russell Sage 2020), Latinos in the New Millennium (Cambridge, 2012) and Latino Lives in America: Making It Home (Temple, 2010), the author of Between Two Nations: The Political Predicament of Latinos in New York City (Cornell, 1998), the editor of Governing American Cities: Inter-Ethnic Coalitions, Competition and Conflict (Russell Sage Foundation, 2001) and co-editor of Outsiders No More? Models of Immigrant Political Incorporation (Oxford 2013), as well as the author of several dozen articles, chapters and reports on immigration, race, ethnicity and citizenship in the United States. He has been a co-PI for the 2006 Latino National Survey, the 2013-2014 Philadelphia-Atlanta Project, and the Latino Immigrant National Election Survey (LINES) conducted in 2012 and 2016. This research has received support from the Carnegie, Ford, MacArthur, Russell Sage and National Science foundations, among others. Jones-Correa has been a visiting fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University, and was the team leader and ISS fellow for the 2010-2013 theme project “Immigration: Settlement, Immigration and Membership,” at the Institute for the Social Sciences at Cornell. He was a member and chair of the Council for the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, and currently serves as Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Russell Sage Foundation.

Selected Publication: Michael Jones-Correa, Helen B. Marrow, Dina G. Okamoto, & Linda R. Tropp. (2018). Immigrant Perceptions of U.S.-Born Receptivity and the Shaping of American Identity. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 4(5), 47-80. doi:10.7758/rsf.2018.4.5.03

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