Today we’d like to introduce you to Stephanie L. Canizales.
Hi Stephanie, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Hi. Well, I’m Stephanie. I was born and raised in LA. I’m the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants. I’m a sister. I’m a Tia to the two coolest kids. And, I guess for our purposes here, I’m a sociologist. I am a researcher, writer, and professor, specifically in the areas of immigration from Latin America to the U.S., with a focus on child migration and child labor.
Whenever someone asks me how I got started and where I am, I instantly go back to Spring 2009. I was in my third year in college. I struggled quarter after quarter, taking classes that made little sense with even less of a sense of direction for the future. I remember I was worried that I was supposed to graduate that next Spring, and I didn’t have a plan.
I was a Political Science major at UCLA and was doing what I needed to do to fulfill requirements. I enrolled in a Sociology class, International Migration, with the world-renowned migration scholar Dr. Roger Waldinger. It was the only Sociology class I took during my undergraduate career. It also happened to be the only class that just clicked.
We learned why people migrate, how they decide where to go, how families form and function across borders, and how immigrants experience incorporation and mobility. We also spent a lot of time learning about immigrant identities and the identities of second-generation children of immigrants. It was the first time I felt like I was learning about myself and putting the pieces of my family, childhood, and identity together.
Like I said, I am the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants. When I took this class, I knew little about El Salvador or why my parents left it. I didn’t understand why they both arrived in Los Angeles, California. I didn’t know why my parents were so adamant about us attending private school, speaking unaccented English, or constantly moving my older sister and me (and later my brother and little sister) from apartments to condos to rented houses and, eventually, to our home. There was so much I didn’t know. But then, after ten weeks, I’d learned the language to describe the things I’d only seen or felt. I saw myself and my family and community differently. It wasn’t chance; it was history and destiny.
That class bred an insatiable curiosity for understanding Latin American migration, immigrant families in the U.S., and the growing-up experiences of immigrant children and children of immigrants.
As a sociologist, I do this full-time. I research this stuff, I write about it, I teach it. I talk about it—non-stop. I’ve had a productive career since obtaining my PhD in 2018. I am proud of my work since then, which I can say more about later. But when I think about where it started, I must give credit to that Sociology class in the Spring of 2009, to Roger Waldinger, and all the research that went into giving me that language.
As I talk about this, I am reflecting on how this motivates me as an academic. I think a lot of the time, people have the personal knowledge and the lived experience, and all we want is the language to describe it— to tell what lives inside of us. I try to offer that language to others, too.
What I’m trying to do now is figure out how to turn the skills I’ve learned as an academic—the research, the analysis, the writing— into non-academic creative art. I’ve narrowly worked on getting to this place, becoming a Sociologist of migration and immigrant families. Still, I’m more than an academic, and I’ve been on more than just an academic journey. I’ve also just been human. I’m exploring that through creative writing on my blog, Musings, which intentionally lives on my professional website to highlight my multidimensionality. Musings explores the language of romantic and platonic love, grief and trauma, success, and life’s surprises.
I am also exploring humanity through creative writing for a book project I’m calling Women That Made Us, which combines interview-based essays and photography to tell the stories of immigrant mothers who raised children who are now influential figures in Los Angeles politics, economy, culture, media, education, and other industries. The idea is to honor the immigrant women who made Los Angeles by making us.
All that to say, where I am today is also very much in motion and progress.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
This question feels a bit like a setup, but maybe that’s because the answer is a hard ‘no.’ I think one of the greatest struggles has been facing the harsh reality that higher education institutions were not made for people like me. That is people of color, immigrants, children of immigrants, people of working-class backgrounds, women, first-generation students—basically, people of minoritized statuses. So, you get there—you enter the upper echelons of institutions of higher education—and you feel totally out of place, lost, and sometimes even a little bit dumb. Like, what the heck am I doing here?
People will tell you it’s imposter syndrome. I’ve started resisting that narrative over the past few years because it almost implies it’s made up. A syndrome: a symptom the dictionary says is a mix of opinions, emotions, and behaviors. But what about the fact that the institution and people within it tell you repeatedly that you don’t belong? You can’t afford the books, let alone tuition. You don’t understand what the heck the professor is talking about despite reading the text over and over and all but transcribing lectures verbatim. People don’t look like you, dress like you, sound like you, or come from where you come from.
There’s just constant structurally produced messaging that is hard not to internalize. I mean, I’m fully a PhD-holding professor with award-winning research. Research that, when I presented findings from a recent study at a conference, a senior professor approached me to say was unimpressive. Her actual words were: “You can put Rolls Royce rims on a Volkswagen, but you’re still just a Volkswagen.” Those words took me back to the graduate school professor who told me I was “uninteresting and unintellectual” during class and in front of my peers. And then, to that TA in undergrad who scribbled “go back to high school” in the margins of an essay I wrote for a Global Studies class.
This is my singular experience coming into academia during a time that most people would consider aspirational in the areas of diversity and inclusion, at least in California. So, it’s incredibly worrisome to think about the future of education and higher education for first-generation students, people of color, children of immigrants, women—pretty much anyone like me– without affirmative action, which is where we are now. The Supreme Court denied the possibility of preserving, let alone advancing, the prospect of diversifying higher education, ensuring equitable access to knowledge, power, and opportunities for mobility, and foreclosed the futures of so many bright minds.
My road has been pretty bumpy, but I’ve continued along it because opportunities and resources were afforded to me to do so. I want other people with goals like mine to be able to traverse the road, however bumpy, should they want to. And I do what I can in my everyday life to support that and them.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Well, my website says I’m a researcher, author, and professor, which really can be summed up as: I think a LOT. I spend most of my time thinking about issues of Latin American migration, the lives of immigrant children and youth and their families, immigrants’ low-wage work, their experiences with poverty and (im)mobility, and what we can do to improve immigrants’ lives. More specifically, I research and write about child migration from Latin America to the U.S. and child migrant labor in industries like manufacturing, hospitality, construction, and other exploitative industries. I’m talking about immigrant kids who grew up sewing clothes for your favorite fast-fashion brands, cleaning rooms, trimming the hedges at those posh LA hotels we all love, and building some of the newer apartment complexes around town.
I spent the last decade researching and writing my first book on this topic. It’s called Sin Padres, Ni Papeles, and is based on the experiences of Central American and Mexican youth who arrived in Los Angeles to work some of those jobs I mentioned, never enrolling in school but working 60, sometimes closer to 70 hours per week for less than $400 a week to secure a better, more livable future for themselves and their left-behind families. The book is coming out with the University of California Press in 2024. I’d love for everyone to read it, but I especially think anyone living in Los Angeles should read it. It’s just a different side of the city than most people know.
So, as a sociology researcher, I write academic books and peer-reviewed journal articles. I also write research reports and essays, like one I have in the Washington Post, to share my work with public audiences and policy briefs to share with advocates and policymakers to make the lives of the people I work with more publicly known. As a sociology professor, I teach courses on immigration, race and ethnicity, immigrant families, and the like.
I’m proud that I’m here despite no one really telling me what to do or how to do it. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve had great mentors and peers who guided me, friends who have encouraged me, and even people who have just passed through my life and left some of their wisdom behind. But you know what I mean. No one sits down with you and gives you a roadmap. My parents didn’t go to college, let alone graduate school. The only people in my life who I knew wanted PhDs were people I met in school. The only people in my life who had PhDs were my professors. It’s all been a puzzle I’ve pieced together along the way. I am proud of my curiosity, persistence, and willingness to take risks. Whenever I mess up, I pull an Aaliyah—“dust myself off and try again.” But you know, I am also just proud that I am the type of person who wants to bring others along with me. I genuinely enjoy sharing what I know about my industry with people working alongside me or still to come. To do this competitive and rejection-filled academic work and remain soft is special. At least, I think so.
So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
One of the most important things to me is that people in our world be given access to opportunities that enable them to live well and be well, which we all define differently. In most cases, people really want to do and be good, but structure and circumstances block opportunities to do so. Research shows that material and social poverty, and the feelings of deprivation and distress they breed, cause some of society’s most devastating social problems, including forcing children to flee their home countries, leaving parents and siblings behind, to find work in the U.S., or vice versa, parents leaving children behind.
But you can’t look at people’s individual decisions to overcome poverty, deprivation, and distress without critiquing the structures that enable these conditions. Racial capitalism and ethnoracial capitalism privatize resources and turn people into profit; systemic racism, patriarchy and misogyny, homophobia, and other -isms and -phobias minoritize groups and render them second-class citizens. These structural inequalities are paired with notions of neoliberalism, a free market in which individuals are responsible for themselves, and meritocracy, the idea that life chances are determined based on ability, talent, and deservingness. Together, these ideologies place the onus of disadvantage back onto the disadvantaged.
Much of my work is motivated by the belief that our society can be better if people are allowed to live and be well. To do that, we need to change social structures that get in the way so that we might respect one another more, we might work together more collaboratively, dignity might be restored, and collective healing might be possible.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.stephaniecanizales.com
- Instagram: stephcanizales
- Twitter: stephcanizales
Image Credits
Antonio Diaz
