Investigadora: Isar P. Godreau

This research aims to assess if the current economic recession and weakening of the local state apparatus in the wake of different crises (a public debt crisis, hurricanes, public protests, earthquakes and the coronavirus pandemic) have impacted how people in Puerto Rico define their racial identity and the role of “race” in Puerto Rican society. To assess changes we aim to 1) compare responses from the 2000 and 2010 population census to those from the 2020 census; 2) re-administer a short survey administered by Dr Bonilla in 2016 which had an open ended question on racial identity (with no predetermined categories or boxes) and 3) conduct focus groups across the Island to get a sense of how people make sense of the 2020 census race question and compare those to a similar study commissioned in 2001 by the Census Bureau.