CTSJ the Matrix - Prof. Stephanie L. Canizales, UC Merced - Unaccompanied & Undocumented Youth in LA

CTSJ's the Matrix is joined by Stephanie L. Canizales. Prof. Canizales is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California at Merced. Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Stephanie is the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants whose migration and integration experiences inspire much of her work. Stephanie earned her PhD from the Department of Sociology at the University of Southern California in 2018. She completed her B.A. in Political Science from the University of California at Los Angeles in June 2011. Stephanie specializes in migration and immigrant integration, children and youth, inequality, poverty, and mobility, and race and ethnicity.

Her first book project, entitled Sin Padres, Ni Papeles, systematically examines why undocumented, unaccompanied Central American and Mexican youth migrate to Los Angeles, California, and how they integrate into school, work, family, and community life as they come of age without parents. In a second project, Stephanie is investigating the social, economic, and health effects of unaccompanied migration, asylum law and application procedures, and social integration in the U.S. on asylum-seeking minors, their caregivers, and their communities in Los Angeles County, California, and Harris County, Texas.