Christina M. Chica

Visiting Scholar

Christina M. Chica is a Doctoral Candidate in Sociology at UCLA as well as a Visiting Research Scholar at the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics and a Scholar-in-residence at the Center for LGBTQ Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is a child of immigrants from Mexico and El Salvador and an interdisciplinary sociologist with research and teaching interests that span transnational gender, sexuality, culture, race, ethnicity, political economy, and urban studies. Christina has used multiple methods to study placemaking among LGBTQ+, migrant, and racially marginalized populations across time and space. Their current project investigates the relationship between urban change and LGBT+ placemaking in Mexico City—especially how LGBT+ people and places have adapted to COVID-19. More broadly, she is interested in the process of forming beloved community—its trials, tribulations, failures, and successes—and its potential for grounding social relations rooted in wellness and social justice.

Participating Years

2023–2024

The State. Abolitionist? Fascist? Communist? Bourgeois?

In imagining and forging the future, there is much talk of the state, but often with little detail. What should public goods consist of, and how might they be organized? Can the need for coercion (e.g., to pay taxes for public goods) be realized without the carceral and its underlying apparatuses of organized violence? What forms of sovereignty and its delegation (above or below) are possible and desirable?