NCID-2706
Janet Muniz
Assistant Professor
California State University, Long Beach
Education/Degree:
1 Sociology Sociology (University of California, Irvine)
About
Dr. Janet Muñiz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at California State University, Long Beach. She is a first-generation nontraditional student from a working-class Mexican immigrant background. She obtained a B.A. in Feminist Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she was involved in Chicana feminist organizations doing outreach and mentoring local youth. She also received an M.A. in Cultural Studies from Claremont Graduate University and completed her Ph.D. in Sociology in 2021 from the University of California, Irvine. Prior to working at CSULB Dr. Muñiz taught at Cal Poly Pomona, Pitzer College, and to incarcerated students enrolled remotely through Lake Tahoe Community College. She teaches and does research around Latinx communities, ethnic identity, and entrepreneurship—her current research project looks at the gentrification of her hometown in Santa Ana, CA.
Current Work
Dr. Muñiz's work examines: (1) the partnerships of stakeholders (e.g., business and property owners, residents, activists, organizations) in creating and promoting economic development policies; and (2) how policies become culturally informed for the Latino/a communities they serve. Emerging research shows how ethnic based commercial development is creating forms of class-based conflict —Dr. Muñiz builds on this work through an example of a gentefying neighborhood—a new term to examine gentrification by and for Latinos/as—gente meaning “people” in Spanish. While gentefication has been framed as a counter movement to the cultural and physical displacement of people and institutions via traditionally white-led gentrification, the leaders of these commercially ethnic based processes are absent of the voices of the working class. This project provides a bridging of perspectives around the impacts of commercial gentefication.
Research Area Keyword(s)
Latino/a Communities, gentrification, mobility