“I began to regularly cross the border when I started to attend middle school in San Diego,” said Castañeda-Perez, a political science Ph.D. student at University of California Los Angeles.
Castaeñda-Perez was born in Tijuana and, as an infant, her parents began crossing her back and forth across the border. When she was older, she began to cross to attend school in San Diego.
“During this time, I had to make various sacrifices that most students in my school did not have to endure, including sleeping less than five hours daily, waking up at 3 a.m. to cross, and enduring harsh questioning about my identity and citizenship status from Customs and Border Patrol on a daily basis,” she added.
The surveys she collected recently during a trip to El Paso are the data collection phase of her dissertation and part of a larger project with Professor Sergio Garcia-Rios of Cornell University, who is supporting and guiding the project.
“We think that this research will help us present to the rest of the country a closer look at the border and one that is often ignored. In other words, a ‘fronterizo’ view of the border,” said Garcia-Rios, who is a Professor of Latino and immigrant identity at Cornell. Read more.
