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Social Sciences Division
Sociology Department
Latin American & Latino Studies
PhD Candidate
Sociology
Graduate
Rachel Carson College Academic Building
Rachel Carson College Faculty Services
I am a first-generation Latinx PhD student born and raised in rural Oregon to farmworker immigrant parents from Mexico. I have a BA from Portland State University in History, an MA in International Human Rights Law from the American University in Cairo, and an MA in Sociology from the University at Albany, SUNY, and an MA in Sociology from UC Santa Cruz.
My dissertation project is currently looking at the growth of the H2-A guestworker program in the Pacific Northwest and its impacts on local farmworker communities.
Labor, Migration, Race, Gender, Class, Farmworkers, Temporary Labor Programs, Plantation Economies, Social Movements, care work, Latinx Sociology, Mestizaje and Settler Colonialism in Mexico, and Critical Whiteness Studies in Mexico. Archival, Qualitative and Community-Engaged Research Methods.
2026-2027 University of California President's Dissertation Year Fellowship (DYF)
2026-2027 AAUW American Dissertation Fellowship (Declined)
2026- Teaching and Learning Center (TLC), Graduate Student Pedagogy Fellowship, UC Santa Cruz
2025-2026- The Center for Engaged Scholarship (CES), Dissertation Fellowship
2025- Latin American and Latinx Studies/HSI Publishing Institute Grant, UC Santa Cruz
2025- Center for Labor and Community Graduate Student Grant, UC Santa Cruz
2025- The Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Graduate Studies, First Generation Graduate Research Award, UC Santa Cruz
2025- Huerta Center for the Americas, Graduate Student Grant, UC Santa Cruz
2024- Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellow Research Grant, Tokyo Foundation
2024- Center for Labor and Community Graduate Student Grant, UC Santa Cruz
2024- UCSC Dean’s Travel Award
2023- UCSC Sociology Department, Travel Award
2022- Lionel Cantú Memorial Award, The Research Center for the Americas, Department of Sociology, and Department of Latin American and Latino Studies, UC Santa Cruz
2022- STARS Reentry Scholarship, UC Santa Cruz
2022- Center for Research on the Americas, Student Research Grant, Latin American and Latino Studies, UC Santa Cruz
2019- National Women Studies Association (NWSA), Activist Scholarship
“Accelerated Slow Displacement: How Growers In Washington State Are Displacing And Replacing Local Immigrant Farmworkers With The H-2A Program.” Latinx Studies Association Conference (LSA), March 2026.
“Accelerated Slow Displacement: How Growers In Washington State Are Displacing And Replacing Local Immigrant Farmworkers With The H-2A Program.” Association of American Geographers (AAG), Latinx Geographies Track, March 2026.
“Manufacturing Displacement: How Growers in Washington Displace Local Farmworkers with the H-2A Guest Worker Program.” American Anthropological Association Annual Conference, November 2025.
“Community-Engaged Research Methods as Community Work.” Special Session for the Center for Engaged Scholarship. Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP), Annual Conference, August 2025.
“H-2A: Another Peculiar Institution” Co-presented with Familias Unidas Por La Justicia, Society for Applied Anthropology Conference (SfAA), March 2025.
“H-2A: Another Peculiar Institution” Co-presented with Familias Unidas Por La Justicia, Invited Special Guest Presentation- Annual Summer Intensive Course, Institute for Social Ecology, July 2024.
“Mestizaje in the fields: How Indigenous Farmworkers navigate and resist anti-indigenous racism in the workplace.” American Studies Association Annual Conference, November 2023.
“Embodied African Dance, Africanness, Mestizaje and the Erasure of Blackness in Mexico.” National Women Studies Association Annual Conference, October 2023.
"Mestizaje as a Project of Settler-Colonialism in Mexico." National Women Studies Association Annual Conference, October 2023.
“A Day of Rage without Women: Women’s role in strikes fighting for labor and gender rights in Mexico.” National Women’s Studies Association Annual Conference, October 2021.
“Organizing Low-Wage Women Workers: A Comparative Report from the Field -- Then and Now.” Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA), May 2021
“A Day of Rage without Women: Women’s role in strikes fighting for labor and gender rights in Mexico.” National Women’s Studies Association Annual Conference (canceled due to COVID-19), November 2020.
“Manufacturing Farmworker Displacement: How Local Agricultural Workers are Displaced in Washington State-Final Report” UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center and UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute (Published Online August 2026: https://www.chicano.ucla.edu/files/_Rosa%20Maria%20Navarro-H-2A%20Guestworker%20Program%20-%20repor-FINAL-UCLA%20Latina%20Futures%202050%20Lab.pdf)
“Transnational Labor Recruitment within the H-2A Guestworker Program” Blog Post. Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas (Published Online: https://huertacenter.ucsc.edu/open-forum/transnational-labor-recruitment-within-the-h-2a-guestworker-program/)
Public Works
OpEd in TIME Magazine. "H-2A Visas Are Not The Solution to Trump’s Mass Deportation of Farmworkers." October, 2025.
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