Julio is a fourth-year transfer student majoring in sociology and a prospective PhD student. He currently holds a Lead Coordinator position in the Latinx Sociology Association at UC Berkeley and is a member of the American Sociological Association and Pacific Sociological Association. Before coming to Berkeley, Julio spent three years at San Diego City College pursuing associate degrees in Sociology, Chicana/o Studies, and Social & Behavioral Sciences. His associate's theses focused on hyperconsumerism and unionization, medical assimilation among low-income patients, and policing and redefining masculinity in collegiate fraternities. Julio is the second in his family to attend a university and plans to be the first one to obtain a PhD. He is forever indebted to those who played and continue to play a role in getting to where he is now. Julio is currently a Faculty-Mentored Undergraduate Research Fellow at the Latinx Research Center.
Julio's current research provides an overview of how Latinx student organizations interpret Latinidad accounting for the vast subregional identities it surrounds, and compares their interpretation of Latinidad. Due to its ambiguous definition, student organizations operate differently and execute different exclusion and inclusion strategies for the sake of their corresponding members. Latino is an ambiguous term with no set concrete definition that allows multiple definitions to run rampant; scholars continuously run into the complexity of measuring race in Latinos due to its label as an ethnicity. Because of this lack of classification, this label groups many individuals with differing backgrounds, phenotypic characteristics, and experiences. Latino students narrow ethnic boundaries in organizations and compete with fellow organizations. Ethnic boundaries are byproducts of the social structure the individual is placed in and have the agency when to deploy and police these boundaries. While there has been substantial research analyzing student perceptions of Latinidad, fewer studies have looked at Latino minority subgroups such as the Caribbean subregion and indigenous identities that reside in Latin America. In addition, clubs that seek to empower these communities are often left out of Latinx research and provide important perspectives to see how Latinidad is perceived by these subgroups.
Additional Interests:
social theory, economic sociology, race & ethnicity, the militarization of Latinos, Latinx sociology, citizenship, social media, digital societies, disinformation & extremism, technology & society, AI, and surveillance
