Overview
I am a mid-20th-century historian focusing on U.S. labor, immigration, and ethnic history and their present-day legacies.
Committee: Verónica Martínez-Matsuda, María Cristina García, Raymond B. Craib
My work has received support from the Mellon Foundation, Cornell Summer Graduate Student Fellowship in Digital Humanities, Humanities New York, Smithsonian's Latino Museum Studies Program, Labor and Working-Class History Association, and American Association of University Women. My research and commentary have been featured in NPR Affiliate Stations and ProPublica.
You may read more about my experience below:
Lyrianne González is a fifth-year History Ph.D. Candidate minoring in Latino Studies. She graduated from California State University, Northridge in 2019 with a double major in Psychology and Chicana/o Studies. As an HSI Pathways/Mellon Student Fellow, she examined the trajectories of children of Braceros by putting archival material concerning education into conversation with oral histories. At Cornell, her research expanded to investigate the racial and generational legacies of U.S. agricultural guestworker programs.
Research Focus
Her dissertation, “Immigration as Labor, Not Settlement: Racial Legacies of U.S. Guestwork,” contributes to the fields of 20th-century U.S. labor, immigration, gender, and ethnic history. It investigates the racial and generational impacts of U.S. agricultural guestworker programs, focusing on the Mexican Bracero Program (1942-1964) and the British West Indies Program (1943-1997). This research questions the racial demographic effects and legacies these programs have left in the U.S., examining the consequences of utilizing foreign groups exclusively for temporary labor rather than settlement. It explores how these practices created racial narratives and siphoning, and whether the guestworkers' encounters with U.S. racial segregation and discrimination influenced perceptions and opportunities for themselves, their descendants, and their ethnic groups. González's dissertation also reveals the clandestine migration of women who accompanied their guestworker husbands, challenging gender restrictions. By investigating the trajectories of the descendants of former guestworkers, it highlights notable figures such as Anna Escobedo Cabral, the daughter of a former Bracero who served as the 42nd Treasurer of the United States and led initiatives to advance Latinx financial literacy and educational achievement. In its conclusion, the dissertation examines the experiences of H-2 Agricultural Workers, contemporary guestworkers who are not bound by gender constraints, including the daughters of former Braceros. The current H-2A Temporary Agricultural Workers Program and the hostility such programs have generated demonstrate the importance of understanding how guestworker programs affect subsequent generations and ethnic groups. “Immigration as Labor, Not Settlement” expands the scholarship on U.S. guestworker programs by exploring the fates of guestworkers’ descendants in the U.S., whose stories have largely remained untold.
Awards and Honors
American Dissertation Fellowship, American Association of University Women (2024-2025)
Public Humanities Grant, Humanities New York (2023-2024)
Honorable Mention, Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship Competition (2023)
Deanne Gebell Gitner ’66 and Family Annual Prize for Teaching Assistants, Cornell University College of Arts & Sciences (2021-2022)
Community Partnership Grant, Humanities New York (2021)
Graduate Líder Award, Premio Lo Nuestro, La Asociación Latina, Cornell University (2021)
Professional Experience
In 2020, she was selected to participate in the University of Texas at Austin’s Voces Oral History Summer Research Institute, where she learned how to conduct oral histories effectively and ethically and make her research publicly accessible. She has worked with Black Farmers United of New York State by collecting oral histories of Black female farmers to bring attention to the disparities they have faced. In the summer of 2021, Lyrianne was awarded the Cornell Summer Graduate Student Fellowship in Digital Humanities. Through this fellowship, she created a publicly accessible digital humanities project that maps guestworker migratory flows: their origin countries and receiving U.S. states. You may visit the project here. While a 2021 Smithsonian Latino Museum Studies Program fellow, she honed in on her Latinx Studies and Public History interests. As the Fall 2021 Public History Initiative Graduate Fellow and Co-Director of The History Center/Cornell University Oral History Fellowship, Lyrianne was thrilled to bring the skills she gained from her past public history experience and guide undergraduates interested in the field. In recognition of her devotion to undergraduate teaching, the College of Arts and Sciences awarded her the 2021-2022 Deanne Gebell Gitner ’66 and Family Annual Prize for Teaching Assistants.
Publications
González, Lyrianne. Review. Sarah Coleman, The Walls Within: The Politics of Immigration in Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021), in Journal of American Ethnic History (Spring 2022).
González, Lyrianne. “Listening to Migrant Workers and Material Culture,” Cornell Public History Initiative, Website, Cornell University, September 2021. https://phi.history.cornell.edu/news-and-stories/listening-to-migrant-workers-and-material-culture/.
González, Lyrianne. “Joy and Aspirations: How Black Female Farmers Revolutionized How I Approach Oral Histories,” Humanities New York Community Partnership Grant, Society for the Humanities’ Rural Humanities, Website, Cornell University, August 2021. https://rural.as.cornell.edu/news/community-partnership-gonzalez.
González, Lyrianne E. “Centering Climate Disaster: A Labor Immigration Driving Force.” Latin American Literary Review 48, no. 96 (Summer 2021): 119–22. https://www.lalrp.net/articles/abstract/10.26824/lalr.259/
Responsibilities
Advisor, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán, Cornell University