Rebecca M. Torres
Associate Professor — Ph.D., University of California at Davis
Associate Professor, Department of Geography and the Environment

Contact
- E-mail: rebecca.torres@austin.utexas.edu
- Office: RLP 3.426
- Office Hours: Fall 2018- TU 2:00 to 4:00 PM
- Campus Mail Code: A3100
Interests
(Im)migration, Children/Youth Geographies, Gender, Feminist Geography, Activist/Engaged Scholarship, Mexico, Latin America
Biography
Rebecca Maria Torres is associate professor in the Department of Geography & the Environment, associate of the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS), associate of the Population Research Center (PRC), and affiliate of the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies (CWGS) at the University of Texas at Austin. Her areas of interest include (im)migration, Children/Youth Geographies, Gender, Feminist Geography, and Activist/Engaged Scholarship. Since 2015, she has collaborated with a bi-national, trans-disciplinary team of scholars on research focusing on the current situation of refugee/migrant children and youth from Mexico and Central America. Project publications include: “A Year After Obama Declared a ‘Humanitarian Situation’ at the Border, Child Migration Continues,” NACLA, 08/27/15; “Re-Conceptualising Agency in Migrant Children from Central America and Mexico,” in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (JEMS); and“A Crisis of Rights and Responsibility: Feminist Geopolitical Perspectives on Latin American Refugees and Forced Migrants” in Gender, Place, & Culture. Other articles related to child/youth migration include: “Child Migration and Transnationalized Violence in Central and North America,” JLAG; “Dibujando al ‘Otro Lado’: Children’s Depictions of the United States in a Rural Mexican Migrant Sending Community,” JLAG; “Undocumented Students’ Narratives of Liminal Citizenship: High Aspirations, Exclusion and ‘In-Between’ Identities,” Professional Geographer; and “Luchando Por Una Nueva Vida: Academic Aspirations of Latino Immigrant Youth in the U.S. Rural South,” in Education in a World of Migration: Implications for Policy and Practice. She has also published migration-related articles in journals such as the Annals of the Association of American Geographers; Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers; Gender, Place & Culture, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (JEMS), Geoforum, and Geographical Review, among others
Rebecca has been involved in various activist and community engaged research projects, including partnering with a rural public school system in North Carolina to establish Los Puentes Dual Language Immersion program to address ESL needs of Latino immigrant children. She also collaborated on a project examining construction workers’ conditions in Austin, spearheaded by the worker’s rights organization Proyecto de Defensa Laboral (PDL)/Worker’s Defense Project. She holds a BA in History, Ibero-American Studies. and Spanish from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an MS in International Agricultural Development and a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of California at Davis.
Courses
GRG 390L • Research In Geography-Wb
37559 • Spring 2021
Meets TH 3:00PM-6:00PM
Internet; Synchronous
UGS 302 • Latinx Migration Narratives-Wb
60249 • Fall 2020
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM
Internet; Synchronous
CDGCWr
ID
GRG 390L • Research In Geography
36935 • Spring 2020
Meets TH 4:00PM-7:00PM RLP 3.710
UGS 302 • Latinx Migration Narratives
59610 • Spring 2020
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM MAI 220C
CDGCWr
ID
GRG 356T • Geog Of Lat American-U.S. Migr
37045 • Spring 2019
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM JES A203A
CDGCWr
(also listed as LAS 330)
GRG 390L • Research In Geography
37145 • Spring 2019
Meets TH 4:00PM-7:00PM RLP 3.710
LAS 330 • Global Food, Farming, & Hunger
39775 • Fall 2018
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM RLP 1.102
GCWr
WGS 393 • Gender And Migration
46225 • Fall 2018
Meets TH 4:00PM-7:00PM RLP 3.710
GRG 390L • Research In Geography
37090 • Spring 2018
Meets TH 4:00PM-7:00PM CLA 3.710
UGS 302 • Latina/O Migration Narratives
61920 • Spring 2018
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM MAI 220C
CDGCWr
ID
GRG 344K • Global Food, Farming, & Hunger
37435 • Fall 2017
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM WAG 308
GCWr
(also listed as LAS 330)
GRG 396T • Gender And Migration
37560 • Fall 2017
Meets TH 4:00PM-7:00PM CBA 4.346
(also listed as LAS 388, WGS 393)
GRG 390L • Research In Geography
37490 • Spring 2017
Meets TH 4:00PM-7:00PM CLA 3.710
UGS 302 • Latina/O Migration Narratives
62565 • Spring 2017
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM MAI 220C
CDGCWr
ID
GRG 390L • Research In Geography
36725 • Spring 2016
Meets TH 4:00PM-7:00PM CLA 3.710
GRG 344K • Global Food, Farming, & Hunger
36460 • Fall 2015
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM CLA 1.102
GCWr
(also listed as LAS 330)
GRG 390L • Research In Geography
36810 • Spring 2015
Meets TH 4:00PM-7:00PM CLA 3.710
UGS 302 • Latina/O Migration Narratives
62395 • Spring 2015
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM MAI 220C
CDGCWr
GRG 344K • Global Food, Farming, & Hunger
37590 • Fall 2014
Meets TTH 5:00PM-6:30PM CLA 1.102
GCWr
(also listed as LAS 330)
GRG 396T • Gender And Migration
37720 • Fall 2014
Meets TH 1:00PM-4:00PM CLA 3.710
(also listed as LAS 388, WGS 393)
GRG 390L • Research In Geography
37905 • Spring 2014
Meets TH 5:00PM-8:00PM CLA 0.124
UGS 302 • Latina/O Migration Narratives
64845 • Spring 2014
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM MAI 220C
CDWr
ID
GRG 344K • Global Food, Farming, & Hunger
37835 • Fall 2013
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM CLA 1.102
(also listed as LAS 330)
GRG 396T • Gender And Migration
37985 • Fall 2013
Meets TH 5:00PM-8:00PM CLA 4.106
(also listed as LAS 388, WGS 393)
GRG 390L • Research In Geography
37610 • Spring 2013
Meets TH 5:00PM-8:00PM CLA 3.710
UGS 302 • Latina/O Migration Narratives
64065 • Spring 2013
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM MAI 220C
Wr
GRG 344K • Global Food, Farming, & Hunger
37400 • Fall 2012
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM BEN 1.104
(also listed as LAS 330)
GRG 396T • Gender And Migration
37540 • Fall 2012
Meets TH 5:00PM-8:00PM GRG 408
(also listed as LAS 388, WGS 393)
UGS 302 • Latino Migration Narratives
63455 • Spring 2012
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM MAI 220C
Wr
GRG 339K • Envir, Devel, & Food Productn
37355 • Fall 2011
Meets TTH 9:30AM-11:00AM GRG 312
Wr
GRG 342C • Sustainable Development
37365 • Fall 2011
Meets TTH 5:00PM-6:30PM GRG 102
Wr
GRG 396T • Gender And Migration
37690 • Spring 2011
Meets TH 4:00PM-7:00PM GRG 408
(also listed as LAS 388, WGS 393)
GRG 339K • Envir, Devel, & Food Productn
37165 • Fall 2010
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM GRG 316
Wr
GRG 356T • Farming, Food, & Global Hunger
37775 • Fall 2009
Meets TTH 3:30PM-5:00PM GRG 424
GRG 356T • Farming, Food, & Global Hunger
36790 • Spring 2009
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM GRG 408
Migration Courses
UGS 302 - LatinX Migration Narratives (Undergraduate)
This course explores the Latino migration experience through migrant stories, or narratives, as documented through testimonial literature, (auto)-biography, ethnography, novels, film, photography and art. We will examine both individual and collective representations of the lived experience of migrants, and situate them within broader current social, political, cultural and economic immigration debates.
Migration is among the most pressing and controversial issues of our time. Examining migration through stories, which are expressions of everyday life experiences by the actors themselves, places a human face on the highly contested issue that is prominent in the public arena. This approach enables students to understand how international, domestic and local policy and practice reshape the life experiences of migrants, and how they in turn respond, negotiate, resist and attempt to access opportunities.
GRG 396T/WGS 393/LAS 388 - Gender and Migration (Graduate)
After many decades of scholarship that virtually ignored gender, scholars increasingly have come to recognize the highly gendered nature of migration and its multiple outcomes. Gender analysis is critical to migration studies, not only because of the gendered nature of mobility and labor, but also because it is the key social construct upon which we organize our lives and society. Men and women experience, negotiate, reconstitute, enact and respond to migration in deeply different ways, even within the same family and community. Understanding these differences, across multiple scales in diverse places, is important to gauge the uneven impacts of migration. In this course we seek to: 1) discern the distinct forms in which men and women experience, negotiate, resist, enact and adapt to migration and current neoliberal practices often underlying (im)mobilities, as well as the sources of these differences; 2) comprehend how migration has unevenly reshaped various facets of life for immigrants and their families – such as material accumulation and consumption, desires, aspirations, division of labor, mobility, power relations, responsibilities, inclusion, exclusion and identity across gender, place and scale; 4) To examine, critically, current migration and development discourse and policy in light of the specificities and differences of place, scale, gender and race/ethnicity in envisaging future alternatives.
This course focuses on contemporary transformations in global gender and migration from an interdisciplinary social science perspective, but with a strong emphasis on the work of feminist geographers. In particular feminist geographies of migration pay close attention to dimensions such as the spatialities and social constructions of power; the politics of scale; gender divisions of mobility and labor; geographies of responsibility and care; critical theorizations of space and place; indentities; emotion and affect; situated knowledges, among others. We will approach topics through a variety of methods including critical readings of academic, ethnographic and more popular texts; seminar discussions (both instructor and student facilitated); in-class and student research paper presentations. To illustrate current trends and processes we will examine case studies from different parts of the globe, however the course will have a heavy Latin America/US migration orientation.
GRG 38143/LAS 388 - Mexican Migration Research Seminar (Graduate)
This course explores contemporary research on the “New Geography of Mexican Migration” to the US, with an emphasis on new origins and destinations, neoliberal restructuring and migration, rural transformation and migration, political and social citizenship, indigenous migration, migration and development,“the left behind,” the gendered nature of migration and the relationship between internal and international migration, among other topics. The seminar will take a “hands-on” approach, with students organizing and collaborating in 2-3 different interdisciplinary research teams. Over the course of the semester, each team of researchers will engage in a major writing project -- specifically to analyze and prepare a publishable quality academic manuscript based on original qualitative and quantitative data from one of 2-3 different field studies. These studies include: 1) Mexican migration from the Tierra Caliente region (Michoacán) to rural North Carolina; 2) Rural transformation & settlement in the US South; 3) Tourism-driven internal and new international migration in the Yucatan (Cancun & rural communities of Quintana Roo). Within this context, students will have the opportunity to explore a variety of theoretical perspectives potentially relevant to their projects including: global neoliberalization; transnationalism and transnational spaces; geographies of hope, fear and desire; feminist theory, citizenship, identity and subjectivity, actor/network theory, embodiment, subaltern studies and political ecology, as well as those identified by research teams. In addition, we will also explore relevant methodological issues and approaches in migration research including: research design, quantitative/qualitative synergies and tensions, empirical/theoretical divisions, migrant narratives and critical ethnography, cross-border collaborations, participatory appraisal, researcher positionality and field work dilemmas, among others.