Silvia Domínguez
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About Silvia
Domínguez conducts research on immigration, mental health, social networks, race and minority populations in urban communities. She teaches on poverty, violence and ethnography. Domínguez is knowledgeable on how people get ahead, what keeps them stagnated, the origins and consequences of violence and the value of social networks. Her current work is on micro-aggressions and the consequences of police brutality over social media. Silvia used to direct the psychiatric services at MCI Norfolk where her team brought down the suicides and homicides to zero over several years. She uses that forensic training currently doing evaluations to prevent deportations. Domínguez is affiliated with the MGH Global Psychiatry Division and helped to put together the mental health policy for Liberia. Silvia has served on many boards of human service organizations such as gang violence, HIV/ AIDS, and legal services. She is also active with Brand New Congress.
Contributions
How People Get Ahead Despite Difficult Circumstances
In the News
Publications
Examines racial microaggressions from a sociological point of view promises additional insight to help understand the complexities of contemporary race and racism in America and abroad.
Discusses how Latin American mothers utilize transnational ties to help maintain the cultural identities of themselves and their children, to alleviate social isolation, and to provide a safer summer housing alternative for their children. Transnational ties may have had some negative consequences, including financial and social burdens associated with maintaining long-distance familial relationships.
Finds that any qualitative data on low-income populations suffer from structural, interpersonal, and symbolic forms of violence. In this case, we looked at low-income minority-status women gathered ethnographically in low-income neighborhoods in Boston, Los Angeles, and New York through the Three City Study of Moving to Opportunity
Presents evidence about mixing methods research using social networks.
The results of a three-year comparative ethnography of Latin American immigrants in public housing in South and East Boston. While the majority of the immigrant women were getting ahead through their own agency and social networks, violence kept the others stagnated. Two interdisciplinary frameworks are presented.
Describes capacity-building interventions based on social capital, including empowerment, community youth development and collective efficacy models, which can work at the individual and community level in preventive and treatment-based interventions.
Pays attention to how respondents generate social capital to obtain resources for survival and social mobility. Physical proximity, reciprocity, and family tensions keep women from relying on family. Also, finds that women generate social support through friendships and non-profit institutions. Social support networks can inhibit social mobility by enforcing time-consuming and professionally limiting expectations on women.