Graduate Student Spotlight

Can you share a bit about your research interests and current research?

My research is focused on migration, family formation and education. While I am interested in each of these areas individually, I’m particularly interested in how they intersect with one another. I study the intersection of these areas through three connected branches of research. The first is focused on education and material inequality and its effects on children’s outcomes. The second explores adolescent aspirations and the transition to adulthood. Third, I study tied migration, relationship quality and union stability. Tied migration refers to moving with a partner, usually for their job. My dissertation examines the transition to adulthood and how adolescents’ goals for family formation (specifically the timing of marriage) interact with other goals, including education and migration. I concentrate on studying adolescents and young adults, as adolescence is a critical period of goal-setting and decision-making with long-term implications for adolescents’ outcomes. My research spans both the United States and international contexts, but my dissertation specifically uses survey and focus group data from Mexico.

What are the main findings from your work to date? 

In my dissertation, I find that although parents begin by voicing equal expectations and goals for their children, they rely heavily on gendered ideas about household responsibilities, morality, and timing of union formation. Parents and community leaders point to early union formation as a key driver of inequality, framing the conversation around personal choice. This disconnect underscores how individual-level explanations are leveraged to explain differences in achievement, even as institutional inequality keeps adolescents from meeting these goals. The second chapter of my dissertation uses survey data to examine adolescent marital aspirations, focusing on the ideal age at marriage. I find that girls are less likely to consider marriage important, yet girls want to get married on average at least one year before boys. Ambitious aspirations in other domains are also associated with delays in ideal age at marriage. 

My solo-authored article, “Beyond Financial Resources: The Role of Parents’ Education in Predicting Children’s Educational Persistence in Mexico,” developed from my master’s thesis, was recently published in the International Journal of Educational Development. It examines how family contexts influence high school dropout in Mexico. My research found that higher levels of parental education are associated with reduced likelihood of children dropping out of upper secondary school, even when controlling for financial resources and other family-level characteristics — and that the effect of parent education varies for boys and girls. I have co-authored a manuscript with Chrisse Edmunds (PhD, OSU) on the relationship between material hardship experienced during childhood and adolescent mental health, recently published in Youth & Society. We find that experiencing material hardship is associated with higher levels of depression and anxiety at age 15. I have worked on an education project with Dr. Doug Downey, in which we conducted seasonal comparison research to examine whether schools reduce or expand achievement gaps during the school year. I was involved in every stage of this project, from workshopping ideas and initial coding to preliminary analyses and revisions at later stages of the project. These U.S. education projects resulted in a manuscript published in Sociology of Education, a top sociology journal. In this article, we analyze the distribution of quality schooling, using a nationally representative child-level dataset (ECLS-K:2011). We show that the distribution of quality schooling is more equal than most sociology education scholars had previously thought. 

In other work using international data co-authored with Dr. Sarah Hayford and Dr. Jennifer Glick (Penn State), we examined how educational aspirations predict the number of children that adolescents plan to have, controlling for a number of sociodemographic factors. We find that educational aspirations and desired family size are negatively associated, especially for girls, across diverse settings.

You do international research. How did you select the country you’re working in, and how did you choose your specific research sites?

My international research is primarily centered in Mexico, although some of my work also examines children’s outcomes in India, Mozambique, and Nepal. My interest in Mexico stems from both biographical experience — my parents are both immigrants from central western Mexico — and an intellectual interest in the long-standing migration tradition from Mexico to the United States. My master’s thesis used national Mexican data to examine what drives adolescents’ upper secondary school (the U.S. equivalent of high school) dropout in Mexico. As a part of this project, I became even more familiar with the Mexican context and literature. I knew that I wanted to continue studying key sociological questions in this context, but I wasn’t yet sure how to pick my research sites.

Since 2017, I have worked with my advisor, Dr. Sarah Hayford, as a research assistant on the Family Migration and Early Life Outcomes (FAMELO) project. FAMELO is an interdisciplinary, mixed-methods project studying the impact of parental migration on children’s health and well-being. The FAMELO team is made up of human development, development psychology, demography, and sociology scholars from various universities. This project includes data collection sites in Jalisco, Mexico; Gaza province, Mozambique; and Chitwan Valley, Nepal. As a part of this project, I have worked closely with the on-site team in Mexico and have traveled there to train interviewers twice. 

Through this ongoing collaboration, I was able to partner with the on-site team in Mexico to travel to Jalisco and conduct a pilot study for my dissertation in summer 2019. Jalisco has historically been one of the top sending states of immigrants to the United States and is a key setting for studying sending communities. Partnering with local residents made my pilot study successful and allowed me to connect with people that might otherwise not have talked with or trusted me if I had ventured there alone. In my pilot study, I interviewed almost 30 residents of rural communities that had been sampled for the FAMELO study. The results of my pilot study and the experience I had directly influenced the types of questions I am addressing in my dissertation, as well as questions I plan on addressing in future work.

What are the broader impacts of the research?

My research increases our understanding of children’s educational outcomes and goals and how these are influenced by access to resources within both the United States and in high-migration contexts. My work on adolescent aspirations also highlights the importance of this stage of the life course as a key time of decision-making — informed by constraints and opportunities — that leads to stratified trajectories.

How has COVID-19 affected your research, and how have you addressed these challenges?

My original plan for my mixed-methods dissertation involved 10 weeks of intensive fieldwork in Jalisco, Mexico, but I have adjusted my research due to COVID-19. As closures and travel advisories were beginning across the country and around the world, I talked with my advisor about the best way to respond to the new challenges. Together, we came up with a plan that was cautiously optimistic while also responsive to the current moment. For the next two and a half months, I dedicated a half hour to an hour every week to thinking and writing about contingency plans should I not be able to conduct field work. In the meantime, I focused on the parts of my dissertation I could work on. Eventually, I had to table fieldwork for my dissertation, but thinking through contingencies allowed me to think about which specific aims of my dissertation could still be addressed and which would need to be postponed. My revised research project now includes some of the main components of the original dissertation, while also adjusted for the constraints caused by the pandemic. Though it was disappointing to have my plan altered, the research that stems from this project will lay the foundation for additional work — especially fieldwork — in this research area. As scholars, we have an intellectual curiosity that we can take advantage of and pivot our focus to examine other related questions. I am excited about the dissertation I am working on — something that would not have been possible without a supportive advisor and committee.

Is there anything else you'd like to add/highlight? 

I’ve loved my time in Columbus and as a member of the sociology community for a lot of reasons. Something that attracted me to the Ohio State sociology program was the level of collegiality and collaboration that was actively encouraged. Having been here now for four years, I can attest to this great environment, and it has been a highlight of my time in the program. Students collaborate on papers together, give feedback on others’ work (even if it is not in their research area), and students show up for one another at practice job talks, conference presentations, and to celebrate each other’s successes. Faculty members likewise are invested in students’ success in similar ways. This type of environment has been key for my own growth as a scholar and as a person. I have found life-long friends, colleagues, and mentors — and I’m grateful to be part of such a supportive community.

Can you share a bit about your research interests and current research? 

My research interests lie at the intersection of race, gender, sexuality, and religion. In particular, I’m interested in the possible causes and potential consequences of homophobia in the black community by examining the role of the Black Church in perpetuating heterosexist ideologies.

What are the main findings from your work to date? 

For my MA thesis, I conducted interviews with black churchgoers to examine how they describe, interpret, and evaluate their congregations’ discussions (or lack thereof) concerning non-heterosexuality. I find that, while all the respondents reported having attended black churches that did not affirm LGBTQ+ people, there was considerable variation in how that non-affirmation looked, suggesting there is no monolithic method by which the Black Church makes black people more homophobic. I also find that a majority of my respondents desire their non-affirming churches to change how they handle the topic of sexual orientation, specifically calling for more open and honest dialogue about human sexuality within religious communities. In another study I recently finished with colleagues at other institutions, our results indicate that heterosexism from within one’s racial ethnic community is detrimental to the health of sexual minorities. These findings demonstrate the need for acceptance of LGBTQ+ identities, especially within the black community.

Can you tell us about your TEDx talk? How did you choose the topic of your talk? What was that experience like? 

I originally intended to speak about my specific research of homophobia in black churches; however, I felt the need to speak on an issue that affects our society more broadly, especially given current events. In my talk, I argue that the various forms of social stratification we see in this country are inextricably interconnected and rooted in the system of white supremacy. I explain that white supremacy is an ideological system that places people into a hierarchy that heralds white, cisgender, male, wealthy, able-bodied people as the standard and everything else as other. In this way, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism and classism are all white supremacist ideologies. 

Giving my TEDx talk earlier this year was probably the most exciting and anxiety-inducing experiences of my life! I was honored to be nominated for such an opportunity and even more grateful to be selected to speak. I was assigned an amazing coach (shout out to Maddie!) who worked with me for months to organize my talk and prepare me for the stage. I also thank my advisor, Korie Little Edwards, for pushing me to think more critically about how whiteness can act as an invisible hand in perpetuating systems of stratification.

Is there anything else you'd like to add/highlight? 

Between my scholarly endeavors, my involvement with my local church, and my leadership within a couple of national LGBTQ+ organizations, my sole hope is that my work has some sort of positive impact on our society.