Summary
In US cities, regions, and territories, low-income Latina/o populations often reside in communities sensitive to pollution and climate change events such as droughts, extreme heat, and wildfires. Public policy can often trigger these inequities by forcing people to live in precarious and underserved communities with limited access to resilient infrastructure, services, and opportunities. However, even though climate change disproportionately impacts and displaces Latino communities, there is sparse research within Latino Studies on how these experiences threaten their health, safety, and neighborhood well-being.
The overarching research question of the Climate and Environmental Justice working group is: How do Latino communities experience, cope, and contest the disparate impacts of pollution and extreme climate change events? To further support this inquiry, we ask:
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How does climate change exacerbate the current inequities experienced by vulnerable Latino communities?
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How does climate change reveal common concerns and create opportunities across geographically and contextually diverse Latino communities?
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How can researchers more effectively work with local communities?
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Our working group is composed of faculty and student fellows from the University of Illinois Chicago, the University of California Irvine, and the University of Texas Arlington. Specifically, our group reveals how Latino communities confront environmental injustices and adapt to extreme climate events. The four regions studied include Chicago, the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, Puerto Rico, and migrant urban/rural communities throughout California. This project expands research on the intersection of Latino Studies, environmental justice, and climate change.
This project is supported by the Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative, which ignites cross-institutional and cross-regional comparative research, training of doctoral students, and new scholarship in emerging areas of inquiry about Latina/os. Funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the initiative serves as the anchor of the Alliance of Hispanic Serving Research Universities, a consortium of R1 Hispanic Serving Institutions.
Themes Across Projects
1) Latino Studies: Towards Transdisciplinary Climate Research and Methods
- Convergence Research/Community-Engaged Research
- Humanities – Storytelling and Public Memory
- Art Practice
2) People-Centered Approaches to Climate Change
- Environmental Racism and Inequities
- Local Knowledge Production and Rhetorical Analysis of Scientific Discourse
- Community Asset Building and Place-Keeping
- Mutual Aid
- Advocacy and Self-Determination
3) Emerging Intersections of Environmental and Social Justice and Climate Change
- Impacts across Geographically and Contextually Diverse Latina/o Communities
- Mental and Community Health
- Displacements
- Labor
Research Projects
Video
People
Director of the Great Cities Institute (GCI) and Professor of Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Illinois Chicago
Assistant Professor of Environmental Policy and Planning at the University of California, Irvine
Assistant Professor of Public Affairs and Planning at the University of Texas at Arlington
Professor in the Department of English at the University of Illinois Chicago and Director of the UIC Freshwater Lab
Professor Emeritus of English and Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago
Executive Director of the Rafael Cintrón Ortiz Latino Cultural Center at the University of Illinois Chicago
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