John Jay College Of Criminal Justice | The City University of New York

   

Isabel Martinez, Assistant Professor in the Department of Latin American and Latina/o, was recently featured in a NBC News.com story about the book drive she has launched to provide bilingual or Spanish books to thousands of detained unaccompanied immigrant children. She has partnered with La Casa Azul Bookstore and Children’s Village, a non-profit that work with unaccompanied minors.

To read the article, click here.

Professor Martinez’s teaching and research interests include the life courses of Latina/o adult and youth immigrants and the intersections of Latina/o immigration, education and technology. Most recently, she is working on several projects including, with the support of the Deutsche Bank of Americas Foundation and in collaboration with various community and educational partners, the design of an educational program that would serve unaccompanied, out-of-school Mexican immigrant teenagers,  and with partners in the United States, Mexico and Canada and the support of the PIERAN, or the Programa Interinstitucional de Estudios sobre la Región de América del Norte, a research project that examines the educational and labour expectations of Mexican immigrant young adults, post-NAFTA.  She was on fellowship leave in 2013-2014 as a Woodrow Wilson National Foundation Fellow to complete her manuscript examining the life courses of unaccompanied, out-of-school Mexican immigrant youth living in New York City, tentatively entitled "Making Transnational Workers from Youth: Mexican Teenagers in Search of the Mexican Dream."  She serves on several executive boards, including the CUNY Institute Mexican Studies and Mano a Mano: Mexican Culture without Borders.