Cheng Ren is a current Ph.D. student in Social Welfare and Designated Emphasis in Computational and Data Science and Engineering Program. He is interested in immigration due to his own migration experience. Cheng Ren 's current research projects include nonprofit organization and social enterprise development related to immigrants service with Geospatial analysis and Natural Language Processing under the supervision of Julian Chow. Cheng Ren is a BIMI Data Analyst and works on Projects Mapping Spatial Inequality and Mapping Immigrants At-Risk.
BIMI Graduate Student Researcher - Collegium Fellowship 2019
My research interests lie at the intersections of international migration, return migration, youth, citizenship, national identities, transnationalism, the criminalization of migrants, and the state. For my MA paper, I compare the “return” experiences of US born and Mexican born youth and young adult’s from the US to Oaxaca, Mexico. Specifically, focusing on how inclusion is constructed in everyday experiences, through identity work youth engage in to make claims on different forms of citizenships in response to a changing context.
I major in Sociology with minors in Education and Public Policy. Growing up in the Bay Area, I've witnessed the complexities of immigrant integration and the effect of immigration policies on marginalized communities. I believe research can inform effective programs and policies that ensure immigrant communities have the necessary resources to lead healthy and successful lives.
I am a 6th-year Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at UC Berkeley, with my current research focusing on the intersection of business, politics, migration and human rights, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. I do my research with a thirst for knowledge and a passion for social justice, focusing on questions ranging from the role of state in international trade and migration, the effectiveness of particular policies as well as their unintended consequences, to the impact of business interests on the implementation and consistency of government intervention. In an increasingly interconnected...
My name is Alizée Natsoulis, I'm a 4th year at UCLA studying Human Biology and Society and minoring in Geospatial Information Systems. The Mapping Spatial Inequality project merges my interest in public health and social justice with my interest in GIS. I believe maps are a powerful tool to visualize data and make research findings accessible to the general public, bringing to light social problems such as the spatial mismatch between immigrant needs and service provision.
Nina Narahari is a current third-year student at UC Berkeley double majoring in Political Science and History. After taking Prof. Bloemraad’s sociology class, Nina became interested in immigration policy and researching its domestic impacts. She works as a reporter at the Daily Californian and wrote an article on how COVID-19 is affecting the asylum-seeking process. Nina Narahari is BIMI Undergraduate Communications Fellow (2020) and is working on compiling a policy brief analyzing the impact of COVID-19 on immigrant
Chelsea Muir is a 2L at Berkeley Law. During law school, she has conducted refugee casework for the International Refugee Assistance Project and volunteered with the ACLU and Innovation Law Lab to advocate for relief for detained immigrants threatened by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a policy and communications fellow for the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative, she has conducted research and written policy briefs on the topic of immigration
Antonia Mardones Marshall is a Doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at UC Berkeley. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Social Anthropology from the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia in Mexico, and Master’s degrees in Socio-cultural Anthropology from Columbia University and in Sociology from UC Berkeley. Her research interests center on the intersection between international migration, racial and ethnic constructions, popular culture, and national identities, primarily focused in the Latin American context. Her most recent publication is titled “Who is Afro-Chilean?...
Luna Kohut is a current third-year student at UC Berkeley double majoring in Global Studies and Sociology. She has a keen interest on understanding the politics of immigration law as well as the cross sections between social justice and migration rights. Luna is interested in examining international refugee crises and desires to further develop her understanding on how massive political institutions balance their agendas with the needs of migrants. She built on this interest in the past while working on a URAP team for the "Oversight in the European Union" project. She also works as a Peer...
Gabriela Jauregui is a fourth-year at UC Berkeley studying Sociology and Political Economy. As the daughter of two immigrant parents, she witnessed and experienced the challenge of obtaining access to services and therefore is interested in immigration to further look into the aspect of access or lack thereof, that immigrants have to non-profit organizations. Gebriela Jauregui has worked as a BIMI Undergraduate Research Fellow in the Mapping Spatial Inequality Project developing and conducting online and phone surveys to collect data on immigrant-serving organizations in the Summer of 2019...