M. Kathleen Dingeman-Cerda, sociology graduate student, has received a $9,500 grant from the National Science Foundation to study how current U.S. immigration and deportation policies and practices impact the lives of Salvadoran immigrants. 

Through life history interviews with deportees and their family members living transnationally in Los Angeles and El Salvador, Dingeman-Cerda will analyze how individual trajectories, family relations and family structures are transformed through deportation. 

Her work will draw on her previous career experience as a social worker for Central American youth in immigration detention and will take her to non-profits throughout LA and San Salvador.

The study began in August and will run through July 2012.