Researcher. Corona, Queens Boy.

I am Julio Fernando Salas, the son and grandson of Mexican and Colombian immigrants who immigrated to New York City in the mid to late 1980s from Puebla, Mexico and Bogotá, Colombia. My three younger siblings and I were all born in Elmhurst Hospital and raised in Corona, Queens, New York.

Growing up, I never could have imagined attending college, let alone graduate school. What once felt like a life where everything went wrong for my younger self, and he couldn’t understand why life was the way it was (though the social sciences taught me why), became and remains an unimaginably lucky second shot at life for my present self. Such life began in 2016 when I enrolled at Queensborough Community College (QCC), and a million factors began to line up - luck, many mentors entering my life and supporting me, pipeline programs supporting me, an educational awakening that led me to become enamored with learning, among others. Life took me from P.S. 28 to P.S. 14 to I.S. 61 to John Bowne High School to QCC to Cornell University, and now to the University of California, Berkeley, where I am a Sociology PhD student.

Centering Latin-American origin immigrant families, my research interests lie at the intersections of immigration, culture, emotion, race & ethnicity, inequality, and health. I am interested in the most intimate aspects of immigrant family life and how members navigate society’s, their family’s, and their own ambivalence, taking into account their race and ethnicity, class, age and generation, and family structure.

I live with a lot of gratitude for all the people who played and continue to play a role in me getting to where I am. They believed in me, uplifted me, supported me, and continue to do so far before I had or encompassed any of the things I do now. They saw things in me I had yet to see and still may not see, and they provided me with tangible resources and support that transformed my life and sense of self. There are too many folks to name, but so many people in NYC, at QCC, America Needs You, Cornell University, Urban Institute, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, in the Bay Area, and at Berkeley, among many other spaces and places. Both figuratively and literally, these people saved me, and I try really hard to repay them with how I live and conduct my life and work.

Please feel free to connect with me at [email protected].