My Research
I am currently finishing my Ph.D in Sociology at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) where I also earned a bachelor's degree in Communication. I research how migrants and under-served communities in Mexico and China use new technologies.
Why mobile populations and technology?
My passion is to understand the emerging social forms of mobility and connections that come with a mobile lifestyle that increasingly relies on ICTs. I am most interested in how this question applies for non-elite users. One of the stories of the digital revolution is that some of the most marginalized and poorest people are now actively incorporating ICT tools into their lives. The phenomena of massive internal migrations to urban areas, the widespread adoption of more affordable ICTs, and an increase in social dislocations associated with the nationalized adoption of global information networks are being seen more frequently among more unevenly developed countries. As this becomes a more familiar story around the world, new forms of inequality will arise. How do we rethink what inequality means in era where everyone has basic access to ICT tools? How are marginalized users creating coherence with ICTs? At the same time, new forms of usage will emerge. We need to be attentive to these new forms so that content and tools can meaningful interface with non-Western and non-traditional ways of thinking and practices.
I have always been fascinated by the intertwining of physical and virtual space, such as the physical city landscape to the virtual cyberspace. I have never thought of these as separate spaces - but once I started graduate school I realized that many researchers treat these as separate, which then excludes all the wonderful ways these spaces are mixing, flowing and fluxing! These kinds of hybrid geographies produce new practices and processes that I want to better understand. I am most interested in how the convergence and mixed use of information communication technologies (ICT), from cellphones to the internet, transform communication practices and introduce new opportunities and constraints for youth and migrants. My work considers how technology policies and digital architectures affect how communities maintain social connections.
Why I work with under-served communities
The communities I work and research in are my homes around the world. They tend to be marginalized and underserved by their country, city or even the world. They are communities that are confronting the role of technology in maintaining social connections. And in many ways they are confronting the failures of technology, policies, and governments to bridge them to more elite and resource rich social networks. For all the claims that technology democratizes information, these groups are grappling with what that really means when information is available but not accessible. It is easy in technology research to get caught up in the hopes, hypes and highs of ICT tools. The priviledge that I have to live and research in some of the most underserved communities allows me to critically question the role of technology in society. I also feel a great sense of responsibility in ensuring that the stories of the people I know are told, because if we only here about how much the celebrities love Twitter or how the cellphone is bringing Africa out of poverty, then we are definitely getting a very distorted account of the world.
Why grad school?
After spending considerable amounts of time working in impoverished New York city neighborhoods (e.g. South Bronx, Bedford Stuyvesant, Jackson Heights), I have realized that many misconceptions about these communities have prevented technology companies from seeing low-income populations as more than media consumers. They are also the creators and distributors of information. While my professional work has been an attempt to address this oversight, I eventually realized that digital literacy programs are limited in their long-term effectiveness due to their short-term solutions to larger problems that extend beyond the community to technology policy and design. In order to better understand the intersection of policy and practice, I decided to pursue a doctoral degree in sociology to learn how to conduct research that could better inform ICT policymakers, software engineers, and product designers about the everyday lives of low-income users.
