2014-2015 César Chávez Fellow

Charlene Cruz-Cerdas is a Ph.D. candidate from the department of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.  Her research interests include racial and ethnic inequality, higher education, social mobility, and labor market participation.  Her dissertation, The Unattainable Dream?  How Higher Education Helps and Hinders Latina/o Upward Mobility, seeks to understand the ways in which Latina/os are uniquely disadvantaged in college degree attainment and in their labor market outcomes because of the cumulative disadvantage of their social class, racial identity, gender, and generational status.  Low socioeconomic status Latina/os’ disadvantage is compounded by their racial identity – about half report they are nonwhite – their gender, since Latino boys appear to experience worse educational outcomes, and generational status because there is evidence that at least some Latina/os of 3rd and 4th generation suffer from generational decline compared to their foreign-born and 2nd generation counterparts.   This quantitative study will employ multinomial logistic techniques and will rely on the nationally representative Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, which includes four waves of data between 2002 and 2012.  Since education is widely seen as the door to upward mobility for many poor and working class youth, I will assess to what extent Latina/os are achieving the American dream of well-paying, stable employment and how they compare with their peers as well as how that might vary by racial identity, SES, gender, and nativity.  Charlene’s past research includes a qualitative study where she investigated ways the Puerto Rican community in Philadelphia negotiate and push back against political and economic marginalization in two different periods of time.  She has also written a paper about Latina/os’ overrepresentation in the for-profit education sector.