Research Statement:
M. Cornejo (PhD, 2022, UC Santa Barbara) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Cornell University. Dr. Cornejo deploys multiple methodologies (e.g., semi-structured interviews, cross-sectional & longitudinal surveys) to pursue and cultivate three (3) research goals:
(1) Examine dynamic interpersonal communication processes (e.g., family socialization messages) among legally objectified migrants, such as migrants impacted by the USA’s immigration incarceration systems, their family members, and their social citizen counterparts (e.g., lawyers, & immigration officials, such as ICE). Interpersonal communication processes among formerly detained migrants can facilitate or hinder their ability to navigate social environments and relationships (e.g., information acquisition) and impact their psychosocial and physical well-being. Furthermore, interpersonal exchanges might significantly impact migrants’ self-view or identity; in turn, these interpersonal communication processes can alter the belonging of objectified migrants to their U.S. social communities.
(2) Explore how structural barriers and disapproving, anti-migrant messages relate to the health and well-being of objectified migrants. Examining this process makes important practical and theoretical contributions. Practically, studying this process can identify avenues of intervention and change that might reduce negative impacts on migrants’ health. Theoretically, this exploration enhances our understanding of how systems of oppression, communicated through various channels (e.g., immigration policy, rhetoric, interpersonal interactions within immigration detention centers), might influence objectified migrants’ understanding and navigation of their social environment; and,
(3) Pinpoint how legally objectified migrants utilize communication identity management and advocacy strategies to challenge the inequities and barriers they encounter within various social systems and environments, such as immigration detention centers. Ultimately, Dr. Cornejo’s research aims to understand how legally objectified migrants employ different strategies to achieve humanization in the USA and, in turn, how this is related to their psychosocial and physical health.
Dr. Cornejo’s research has been published in leading journals in the field of Communication, such as the Journal of Communication, Health Communication, and the Journal of Applied Communication Research.
Teaching Statement:
My teaching philosophy centers on expanding beyond traditional educational frameworks often designed to promote assimilationist attitudes among non-white (e.g., Indigenous, Mexican, & Black) communities to facilitate transparent, context-inclusive, critical—and usually provocative—thinking about psychosocial and intergroup relationships among all my students (e.g., The USA’s contradictions & realities about the current/historical treatment of objectified migrants). Guided by this philosophy, my teaching goals move beyond facilitating superficial, tepid conversations of equity, inclusion, and (non-actionable) social justice rhetoric. Instead, my teaching goals engage critical pedagogy, an intellectual inquiry framework to:
(a) Examine and challenge the social construction of race in the USA;
(b) Truthfully recount the past and the interpersonal and systemic experiences of racism endured by non-white persons in the USA and how this process impacts their lives;
(c) Defy Eurocentric and westernized epistemologies (e.g., how support of objectivity, neutrality, meritocracy, colorblindness, freedom of expression ideologies, or “listening to all sides”), which provide political cover for white hegemonic social practices historically rooted in the oppression of non-white persons—inside and outside the classroom—upholding the status quo (e.g., white migrants’ experiences as standard or normative while dismissing or silencing groups affected by racism; see White Public Pedagogy in Lybeck, 2020); and
(d) Endorse collective identification of promotive paths that facilitate students’ agency reconstruction and the creation of equitable social relations to power among our communities, as well as end the legacy of white hegemony that still negatively impacts all persons in the USA, including white migrants (see Taylor et al., 2009).
References:
Lybeck, R. (2020). Critical Social Justice Education and the Assault on Truth in White Public Pedagogy. Springer International Publishing.
Taylor, E., Gillborn, D., & Ladson-Billings, G. (Eds.). (2009). Foundations of critical race theory in education (Vol. 216). New York, NY: Routledge.
