Research

My book project, Mexican Corridors: Migration and Placemaking in the Lower Midwest, is a transnational account and analysis of ethnic Mexican life in Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska. I argue that Mexican migrants created a regional community that connected urban and rural space through mobility, cultural adaptation, and transnational organizing. What results is a dynamic history of Mexican neighborhoods, organizations, and consulates that offers a counternarrative to a United States transformed by the westward movement of Anglo-Americans and the assimilation of European immigrants.

​My use of U.S. and Mexican national archives as well as university, state, and local archives has been funded by the Americas Research Network, the Kansas Historical Society, the Center for Missouri Studies, and University of Minnesota Libraries. I have produced two scholarly articles from their generous support: “Mexican Community Formation in Nebraska: 1910-1950” in Nebraska History and “Mexican Migrants in Urban Missouri: Social Welfare Institutions and Racial Boundaries in Kansas City and St. Louis, 1915-1940” in Missouri Historical Review. You can find more of my writing on Mexican migrants in the Midwest here and here.

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