Dr. Elizabeth Aranda, a professor in the Department of Sociology and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences and director of the Im/migrant Well-Being Research Center at USF, was recently the recipient of the 2024 Award for Public Sociology in International Migration from the American Sociological Association (ASA).
Dr. Elizabeth Aranda. (Photo courtesy of Dr. Elizabeth Aranda)
According to the ASA website the award, “recognizes the work of an IM section member who addresses immigration and related issues in ways that apply scholarly knowledge directly in public work, generates such knowledge for public use, or otherwise contributes to improving the lives of migrants or refugees. This prize recognizes the value of such applied work and seeks to promote public sociology.”
Aranda highlighted one of her projects that she feels embodies the spirit of the award.
“A couple of years ago my collaborator, Elizabeth Vaquera, and I began discussing an initiative that we now call the Im/migrant Well-Being Scholar Collaborative. The goal is to facilitate the translation of research to policymakers and the public. We felt that there was an incredible amount of high-impact research in the area of immigration, but at the same time, the policies that are often put forth at the state and national levels are not always informed by sound research,” she said.
“The idea behind this initiative is to help train researchers, particularly those who come from immigrant communities themselves, to make their work more accessible to policymakers and the public, to have an impact on the passage of policies and the implementation of programs that can improve immigrant well-being,” she added. “In our first year of implementing the initiative, we held four trainings attended by a total of about 130 scholars.”
Aranda also noted that through this initiative, she and her colleagues are also working to bridge the gap between academic research, public policy, and community advocacy, which culminated with a congressional briefing held in February.
“We worked with four scholars on translating research they had published to policymakers and the public. We worked with them to distill the policy implications of their work and to communicate them in a way that was accessible to lay audiences. We have also worked with other scholars on this kind of translation, which resulted in one of our members meeting with about half a dozen congressional offices and several members of the judiciary committee in Washington, D.C. this summer to discuss the implications of her research related to professional licensing of DACA health care workers. These policymakers wanted to understand the challenges that DACA recipients who were health care workers faced in obtaining their professional licenses, and how they were contributing to their communities.”
According to Aranda, earning this award is a great personal and professional achievement.
“It is recognition that we are doing something right, and filling a void that was needed in research and policy spaces. Scholars want to make a difference in our world with their research, but we are not taught these skills in graduate school. The Collaborative, as we call it, creates a mechanism that provides scholars who want these skills with a pathway to obtain the tools they need to make real change happen.”