Yuna Blajer de la Garza, Ph.D.

yblajer@luc.edu


Assistant Professor

Loyola University Chicago

Year of PhD: 2019

City: Chicago, Illinois - 60660

Country: United States

About Me:

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Loyola University Chicago. Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford University. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2019.
I am a political theorist who studies inequalities in democracies. More specifically, I am interested in egalitarianism, critical theory, belonging, citizenship, and the “side-effects” of otherwise desirable formal institutions. Methodologically, I ground my theoretical arguments in empirical realities using ethnographic tools. In doing so, much of my work has focused on Mexico, but I have also written on France and the United States. My work has been published in Politics & Society, the European Journal of Political Theory, and the Journal of Politics.
My book project, A House is not a Home: Citizenship and Belonging in Contemporary Democracies, examines what is required for equal standing within democratic societies in which unequal belonging remains a challenge for egalitarianism, despite equal citizenship and rights.

Research Interests

Political Theory

Immigration & Citizenship

Democratic Theory

Inequality

Citizenship

Contemporary Political Theory

Power, Authority, Domination

Egalitarianism

Countries of Interest

Mexico

France

United States

My Research:

A detailed description of my research is available on my website, here.

Publications:

Journal Articles:

(2023) Conceptualizing Belonging for Democratic Theory, Journal of Politics

This article probes belonging as a category of analysis, aiming to contribute to our understanding of contemporary democratic citizenship and its challenges by using our everyday manners of speech as the object(s) of philosophical inquiry. A focus on belonging disentangles how esteem, identity, and the gaze of others shape experiences of membership.

(2022) The Meek and the Mighty: Two Models of Oppression, European Journal of Political Theory

This article theorizes the stories that justify, feed upon, and reproduce systems of oppression. I argue that emotional narratives contribute to the constitution and reproduction of systems of oppression, and that different emotional narratives constitute different forms of oppression. I examine two of these emotional narratives: pity and fear. Winner of the Carlo Argenton Memorial Prize for the Best Research Article in 2022 in the EJPT.

(2021) Vulnerability and Due Process in Modern Mexico, Constitutional Political Economy

In this co-authored paper, we use a novel dataset of imprisoned populations in Mexico to study the relationship between socioeconomic vulnerabilities and due process violations. We show that women, members of indigenous communities, and people with less schooling are more likely to suffer due process violations. Surprisingly, increased access to qualified public defenders fails to reduce the likelihood of suffering a due process violation among marginalized populations.

(2019) Leaving your Car with Strangers: Informal Car Parkers and Improbable Trust in Mexico City, Politics and Society

This paper explores the case of informal car parkers in Mexico City, to whom drivers regularly entrust the keys to their vehicles. In contrast to literature on social trust that expects institutional trust and interpersonal trust to support one another, I show that the latter improbably arises in the context of corrupt and inefficient institutions. I argue that interpersonal trust becomes possible, not only despite class cleavages and institutional shortcomings, but, paradoxically, because of them.

Book Reviews:

(2019) Book Review of B. Zacka's When the State Meets the Street, Contemporary Political Theory

This is a book review of Bernardo Zacka's book, When the State Meets the Street (2017)