Julia Quintero is a Master’s student at Texas State University studying cultural anthropology.  She holds a BA in Anthropology from California State University, Chico.

Julia’s research centers around (im)migration, human rights, gender studies and activism. Her thesis reconstructs the life histories of migrant women who have disappeared or died while crossing the US-Mexico border. These stories are shared in an effort to both humanize migrant women who are regarded as numbers rather than people and to critique inhuman border policies that regulate the violence migrants face. This research is framed within Chicana/o scholarship and serves as a form of resistance, where families of the oppressed have the opportunity to share their stories and aid in knowledge building regarding migrant experiences in the borderlands.

This work is in collaboration with Colibrí Center for Human Rights, an organization that helps families of disappeared migrants by identifying and honoring those who have died on the US-Mexico border. Julia has previously worked with Colibrí on their storytelling projects, interviewing families and editing audio into podcast formats for education curricula and museum exhibits. Julia is currently interning with Operation Identification (OpID), a program based out of Texas State University that aims to identify and repatriate the remains of presumed migrants. OpID has given Julia the opportunity to see other layers of migrant identification work through a medico-legal lens.

As the daughter of Mexican immigrants, this work is deeply personal to Julia and she hopes to continue advocating for migrants and their families through her work.