Edelina M. Burciaga is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado, Denver, and a faculty affiliate in the Immigration and Citizenship Law Program at CU-Boulder Law and the CU Population Center. Dr. Burciaga received her Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. Her research and teaching interests include race & ethnicity, immigration, Latina/o sociology, law and society, education, social movements, and qualitative research methods.
Her research examines the experiences of Latino undocumented immigrants who came to United States as children, and who remain in the country without a pathway to citizenship. Existing research focuses almost exclusively on undocumented young adults growing up in California. We know relatively little about if and how state laws and policies regulating immigrants, which have proliferated in recent years, impact their experiences of belonging and incorporation. To fill this gap, Dr. Burciaga is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled, The Latino Undocumented 1.5-generation: Navigating Belonging in New and Old Destinations. Drawing on fieldwork and in-depth interviews with Latino undocumented young adults in Los Angeles, CA and Atlanta, GA she highlights how these young adults, in accommodating and restrictive states, make meaning of the legal and social paradox of growing up without papers in the United States. She finds that state laws and policies, especially within the area of college access, mediate opportunities not only for their social mobility and incorporation, but also profoundly shapes their sense of belonging. Findings from this research have been published in Mobilization, Ethnicities, Law & Policy, and the Association of Mexican American Educators Journal.
Edelina is a former Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellow (2015). Her research and work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC MEXUS), the University of California Center for New Racial Studies, the University of California Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, and the Society for Study of Social Problems.
Edelina was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She graduated from Stanford University (1999) with degrees in Chicana/o Studies and English and with honors in Education. She also holds a Master’s Degree in Education from the Stanford University Graduate School of Education (2000), and a law degree from the Boston University School of Law (2005). After law school, she received the Bart Gordon Memorial Fellowship to practice law in the Racial Equity unit at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, where she focused on decreasing educational disparities for Latina/os by employing a community lawyering model.
Edelina M. Burciaga 