Getting up in the predawn hours, Rocio Rosales went to the wholesale markets with fruit vendors, "sat and sold alongside them on street corners, and sometimes shared a home-cooked meal with them in their private homes at the end of the workday," she said. She also conducted follow-up interviews with respondents she had initially approached in 2006—some in person, but a few by phone because respondents had returned to Mexico for various reasons. All of this—and more—occurred thanks to a DIGSSS award supporting her ethnographic research.

She also spent some time revising a paper about street-corner interactions between police and fruit vendors, which she presented at an academic conference she helped organize: "Contesting the Streets: Vending, Open-Air Markets, and Public Space." The two-day conference, sponsored by departments at both UCLA and USC, included local and international scholars. She will co-edit a volume of conference papers with UCLA Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies Abel Valenzuela.

Published in Winter 2011, Graduate Quarterly