Organizer: Alexandre Pires, PhD Student at Université Paris Cité and Visiting Graduate Researcher at the UCLA Latin American Instiute.
Presenters:
Juliana Mazzucotelli, PhD Student at Université Grenoble Alpes and Visiting Scholar at UCLA Department of Geography
Where the Grass Grows Greener: Water, Gardens, and Environmental Injustice in the Suburbs of Los Angeles and Cape Town.
As climate change reshapes landscaping practices, affluent neighborhoods in Los Angeles and Cape Town are adapting their landscapes, ecosystems, and water infrastructures to align with new trends. This presentation examines how these transformations are deeply embedded in power dynamics, shaping gardens and green spaces in ways that not only enhance these suburbs’ resilience to water scarcity but also reinforce the privileges of their residents. By focusing on the role of plants—whether native, imported, or modified—this analysis highlights how vegetation choices and management contribute to the reproduction of environmental and social injustices.
Alexander Ferrer, PhD Student at the UCLA Department of Geography and Graduate Researcher at the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy
Beyond Opportunity Hoarding: beneficiary geographies in a plantation rental market
There has been a steady stream of research in and in conversation with geography cataloguing the spatialities of white advantage, attempting to reframe conversation in the social science that has long been focused on Black disadvantaged. These conversations have traced the development and imposition of the white spatial imaginary, the differential valuation of white owned properties, and the tax shifting approaches that subsidize white space. Comparatively very little work, however, traces the role that rent payments play in organizing these geographies. Drawing on the case of South Central Los Angeles, this presentation traces how the rental market produces geographical relations of racialized extraction that contribute to the enrichment of already privileged residential locales, taking up the classic question of "who develops who."
Lucie Jaouen, PhD Student at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and Visiting Scholar at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.
Bypassing the Territorial Ban on Abortion in the United States: Women’s Mobility and Agency from Texas to New Mexico
The repeal of Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in the United States, has led to unequal access to abortion services depending on where women live. Today, 14 states prohibit abortion on their territory, forcing their residents to move to a state that protects this right. This presentation shows a difference in access to abortion and travel experiences that underline the existence of intersectional discrimination. Women experience multiple barriers (legal, economic, logistical, spatial, social) which refer to intersectionality. They overcome these barriers thanks to organizations. This strategy reveals their agency: women regain control of their choices and their bodies and bypass illegality to have an abortion.