Biography
Rosa is a scholar, community advocate, writer and strategist from the Global South. She was born and raised in Lima, Perú, and has spent the last 17 years living in the U.S. Deep South. Her personal, academic, and professional experiences in the United States and abroad are rooted in a life-long commitment to social and racial justice. She has a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from the University of Southern Mississippi and a master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of New Orleans (UNO). Rosa is completing her research to obtain a PhD in Urban Studies from UNO, focusing on the emerging spatial concentrations of the Latinx community in the New Orleans metro.
Research
My research explores how Latinxs’ ethnic identity is socially constructed and intrinsically tied to cultural manifestations that are (re)shaping the nation’s-built environment. This project studies the demographic changes and emerging patterns of spatial concentration of the Latinx community in the New Orleans metro during the last two decades. I am developing a concept of emerging barrios to describe this phenomenon. Mixed methods are used to look at examples of “Latino urbanism” in the New Orleans metro. By zooming into four neighborhoods with the highest concentrations of Latinx population in the New Orleans metro (all located in the city of Kenner), I will evaluate two main assumptions behind the Latino urbanism framework in this context: 1) that Latinxs are re-shaping suburban neighborhoods and revitalizing underutilized retail corridors, improving both the quality of life and the local economy for all residents; and 2) that Latinxs have a cultural preference to live in compact cities. Both assumptions are intrinsically connected to Latinx’s ethnic identity formation that operate in a larger context of globalization, where neoliberal urbanism is itself always shaped - as the city always is - by both structural forces and resistance to these forces.
