About
Estela B. Diaz is a Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology, and Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Education Research Section (ERS) at Princeton University. Her research areas include culture, economic sociology, education, family, organizations, and social inequality. Estela’s current book project examines the commodification of child rearing through a case study of private nursery, preschool, and kindergarten admissions in New York City.
Estela received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University in 2023 and A.B. in Sociology with a certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies from Princeton University in 2014. Estela's work has been funded by a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
Before pursuing a Ph.D. in sociology, Estela worked as an undergraduate admissions officer at Princeton University and helped organize Princeton’s Office of Religious Life’s first ever “Poverty and Peacemaking” Conference, an interdisciplinary gathering on the role of poverty alleviation as a critical component in peacebuilding efforts.
Research
My research agenda has focused on the reproduction (and disruption) of social inequalities across varying sites and time periods. I use a range of qualitative methods in my work, including oral histories, ethnographic fieldwork, and interviews.
In my primary line of work, I bridge the sociological literature on status and economic sociology with the sociology of education. I examine education as a social and cultural institution using the case of admissions to private nursery, preschool, and kindergartens in New York City. Most research on admissions to elite educational institutions focus on entry to high school, college, or graduate settings. While these gatekeeping moments are illuminating and of consequence to long-term outcomes, they cloud numerous mechanisms at play earlier in the life cycle and educational systems. My research on the highly selective early admissions process reveals the tenuous construction of merit and highlights a critical moment when parental and organizational decision-making lay the foundation for life-long wealth and educational achievement gaps. Several papers, both under review and in progress, examine different facets of this line of work.
My secondary line of research includes collaborations situated within my broader interests in culture and inequality. While these projects vary in data type and local contexts, all are guided by the question of asking how culture and resources come together to shape action in different communities or organizational settings.
Publications
Abstract
Historically, elite schools have selected students in ways that reproduce advantages for dominant groups and exclude groups deemed undesirable. The specific outgroup in question has changed over time, but the underlying logic used to exclude these groups is often related to disability. Yet, disability as a social category has received minimal attention in discussions of elite reproduction. In this article, we draw on qualitative data collected from elite independent pre-K–12 schools to show that disability is indeed a salient basis of selection into elite educational environments, one that begins at the earliest moments of educational sorting: admission to elite early childhood programs. Through interviews with admissions personnel, we show that elite independent schools explicitly structure their admissions processes to identify—and exclude—children who are perceived as having or being at risk of developing any type of disability, regardless of impairment type or support needs. We argue that admissions practices at elite independent schools (1) serve as a form of social closure intended to restrict enrollment to young children perceived as able-bodied and neurotypical, and (2) represent a case of essentializing merit, in which elite gatekeepers construct merit as an intrinsic, rather than achieved, property of individuals.
Abstract
Mexican Americans are the largest immigrant and second-generation group in the country. Their sheer size coupled with their low educational attainment have generated concerns that, unlike Asian groups like Chinese Americans, Mexican Americans do not value education—a claim wielded by opponents of affirmative action. Drawing on analyses of the Immigration and Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles study, we challenge two underlying presumptions of this claim: the children of Mexican immigrants are less successful than the children of Chinese immigrants; and they are less committed to success. Centering our analyses on the hypo-selectivity of U.S. Mexican immigration, we maintain that how we measure success determines which group is more successful. Moreover, we show that second-generation Mexicans adopt diverse success frames that stem from cultural heterogeneity. Consequently, they pursue variegated strategies of action that include class-specific ethnic resources in their quest for success. Despite their remarkable intergenerational gains, the racialization of low achievement and the mark of a criminal record can be a death knell for mobility for the children of Mexican immigrants. Our research provides fruitful context to inform the current debate about affirmative action.
Teaching
“Charles Tilly Award for Teaching and Service” Department of Sociology, Columbia University, 2019
Instructor of Record, “Sociology of Education,” Columbia University, 2022
Teaching Assistant, “Social Science Research Methods,” Barnard College, 2019
Teaching Assistant, “The Social World,” Columbia University, 2018
Day 1 of “Sociology of Education”
Contact
Dr. Estela B. Diaz
Princeton University
Wallace Hall
Princeton, New Jersey 08544
ebdiaz (at) princeton (dot) edu
609-258-4436
Pronouns: she/her
