Abel Valenzuela |
Abel Valenzuela, Jr.
Professor Valenzuela holds a joint appointment in the Department of Urban Planning and the César E. Chávez Center for Interdisciplinary Instruction in Chicana/o Studies. His research is primarily concerned with the issues faced by minorities and immigrants in the U.S. His work focuses on three key areas, which are often interrelated: 1) immigration and labor markets, 2) poverty and inequality, and 3) immigrant settlement patterns and related services. His work combines ethnographic, in-depth interviews, participant observation, and quantitative methods to document and explain the processes that govern the incorporation of immigrants to the U.S. society. Currently, professor Valenzuela is directing several projects, each in different stages. His groundbreaking work on day laborers in Los Angeles – immigrant men who convene on street corners daily in search of temporary work, has been replicated in Japan and New York City. In 2003, he launched a national study of day laborers. He has published numerous articles and is completing a manuscript on this topic. Related is a study on informal travel among immigrants. Camionetas, or small vans, are used to travel inter-regionally and transnationally. Informal travel arrangements, like camionetas, form an integral part of planning and travel use by immigrants in California and elsewhere in the United States. These community-based travel services target the needs of a traditionally underserved group— working poor immigrants—who live on the margins of economic survival and may not be well served by fixed-route transit. A third examples of Professor Valenzuela’s work is a project that aims to understand how women, in the face of declining federal resources, strategize and survive as they are forced to transition from TANF to employment. |
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Josiah Heyman |
Josiah Heyman Qualifications: Research Interests: |
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Renee Saucedo |
Renee Saucedo La Raza Centro Legal Renee Saucedo is an organizer, an activist and a lawyer who has played a prominent role in this country's immigrant rights movement at all levels. She has led various immigrant rights organizations and has participated in numerous community campaigns related to the rights of undocumented immigrants, immigrant workers and poor people, generally. She founded INS WATCH, a grassroots organization that resists INS enforcement, facilitated immigrant organizing around Welfare Reform, and helped push for San Francisco being declared an "INS Raid-Free Zone." Renee believes that real change happens when oppressed people organize, create controversy and fight back. In her current job as Director of the San Francisco Day Laborer Program, Renee supports organizing by day laborers and domestic workers, and has helped establish a Day Laborer Center, a San Francisco Day Laborer Association and a Domestic Workers Collective. Saucedo formerly chaired the San Francisco Immigrant Rights Commission and was the former Executive Director of the Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights. She was also a member of the Mayor's Task Force on Welfare Reform. She has been honored with numerous community service awards from organizations including the Mexican American Legal Defense & Education Fund (MALDEF), the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies, the San Francisco Minority Bar Association and the San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women. |
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A community of socially engaged scholars in partnership with social justice |
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