About

Rebecca M. Torres is a professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment at the University of Texas at Austin, within the College of Liberal Arts. Her academic interests include (im)migration, children and youth geographies, gender, feminist geography, and activist or engaged scholarship, with a focus on Mexico and Latin America. Her work encompasses a range of topics related to social and spatial dynamics in these regions, emphasizing issues of migration, gender, and youth. As a scholar, she contributes to understanding the intersections of geography with social justice and activism, engaging with communities and scholarly debates on these critical issues.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Criminology
• Law
• Gender studies
• Social Science
• Public relations
• Demography
• Public administration

Selected publications

• Coupling Effects of Mexican Avocado Production with Demand in the United States: A Social-Ecological Perspective on Sustainability Concerns

  Journal of Latin American geography · 2025-05-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  In this perspective, we illustrate the major elements of the telecoupled social-ecological system that connects the production of avocados in the highlands of Mexico with demand for avocado in the United States. The social and environmental consequences along the supply chain highlighted here range from deforestation to an increase in out-migration and organized crime. Mitigation could include forest conservation practices and a shift in the production system towards ecological management. Nevertheless, these actions should also engage with initiatives fueled by consumer demand for products untarnished by environmental degradation or social injustices.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Embodied encounters, emerging publics in U.S. immigration courts

  Political Geography · 2025-04-26 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Mujeres e infancias: La experiencia migratoria desde los cuidados

  El Colegio de la Frontera Norte eBooks · 2025-10-10

  book

  La migración determina e incluye procesos desafiantes para quienes, por las razones que sean, optan por salir de sus lugares de origen en busca de un mejor futuro. Si bien es cierto que la experiencia migrante es subjetiva, los múltiples testimonios de personas migrantes de sur a norte reflejan las complejidades de los procesos de movilidad que encierran aprendizajes sobre los encuentros, los logros, las pérdidas, las afrentas cotidianas y las violencias. En el caso de las mujeres en migración forzada, las vulnerabilidades marcadas por las condiciones de multiseccionalidad plantean dilemas y problemáticas complejas que van desde las salidas de sus comunidades hasta sus destinos de acogida. El cuidado de las necesidades básicas propias y ajenas durante los recorridos y estancias es un proceso vivido por ellas de maneras muy peculiares, ya sea que el destino final sea una ciudad fronteriza o un campo jornalero. En un momento en el cual los cuidados están en el debate público como temática central de género, aquí se presentan casos de estudios y ensayos sobre mujeres, infancias y cuidados en escenarios de movilidad, con la intención de delinear ejes para las mejoras y creación de políticas públicas que apunten al respeto por la dignidad humana.

  PublisherDOI

• Child Guides and Migration in the U.S.-Mexico Border Region

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2025-06-24

  book-chapter

  Abstract Mexican youth from U.S.-Mexico border cities are increasingly involved in facilitating clandestine migrant journeys to the United States; yet little is known about these children and their involvement in human smuggling. Drawing from a binational study of unaccompanied migrant children detained in Mexican immigration shelters, this chapter provides rare insight into the lives of children who work as migrant guides. Our research suggests that children’s involvement in clandestine migration is largely connected to social, economic, and political precarity. This precarity places them at significant risk from both criminal organizations and the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. Overall, our work points to the multiple forms of violence that underpin the use of children in migrant smuggling, as well as the complicated tensions between children’s recruitment and children’s agency.

  PublisherDOI

• Mapping the Violence Reputation of Organized Crime Groups

  Journal of Illicit Economies and Development · 2025-12-10

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  This Methods article details a survey used to create spatial maps of perceived violence and danger, key indicators of criminal governance, across three Mexican states. This method adds to traditional mapping techniques, which typically only visualize areal data at the municipal level. Criminal governance has been defined as the process by which organized crime groups impose control over territory, population, and resources, often through violence, threats, and bribery. The ability to inflict violence, whether real or imagined, allows groups to establish a persuasive form of communication, solidifying their legitimacy in enforcing rules and claims over territory. The methodology presented here involves conducting surveys to gauge the perceived level of danger in different areas, followed by Geographic Information System (GIS) empirical Bayesian kriging interpolation to generate maps. The study focuses on three Mexican states: Michoacán, Jalisco, and Colima, providing a valuable tool for understanding the relationship between perceived criminal violence reputation and various socio-economic and legal outcomes, especially in the Mexican context. The paper also discusses potential improvements and adaptations of the methodology for broader applicability and acknowledges its limitations.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Conducting Research with Migrant Children Impacted by Humanitarian Violence at the U.S.–Mexico Border

  Geographical Review · 2024-10-01 · 2 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Reclaiming Cueca: The Brava Tradition and Imagined Identities Among Santiago's Cuequeros = Re-significando la Cueca: la tradición brava e identidades imaginadas entre cuequeros de Santiago

  Journal of Latin American geography · 2023-06-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  In 1970s Chile, Pinochet's military dictatorship co-opted the rural cueca campesina as a national symbol, culminating in its instatement as the country's institutionally ordained music and dance in 1979. In parallel to the appropriation of this rural musical form was an attempted erasure of its urban folkloric counterpart–cueca brava. Cueca brava remained largely hidden from Chilean public life during the cultural repression that accompanied Pinochet's regime between 1973 and 1990. Today, however, there is a revival of cueca brava that traces back to Chile's return to democracy in the 1990s. Using a place-based lens, we examine the resurgence of cueca brava in Santiago to demonstrate how musical traditions of the past offer raw material for the construction of contemporary Chilean identities. Through participant observation and semi-structured interviews in Santiago, as well as lyrical analysis, we seek to characterize the current cueca brava movement. We ground our work in (social) identity theory, Benedict Anderson's concept of imagined communities, and Jan Assmann's notion of cultural memory. By examining how cuequeros engage memory, history, and place, we propose that the socio-spatial constructions of the contemporary cueca brava resurgence engender new individual and collective identities fortified by a dialogical relationship between past and present. En Chile, durante los 1970, la dictadura militar de Pinochet cooptó la cueca Campesina como símbolo nacional, lo que culminó en 1979 al ser declarada oficialmente como la música y danza nacional. En paralelo a ello, se intentó borrar su contraparte folclórica urbana: la cueca brava. La cueca brava permaneció en gran medida oculta de la vida pública chilena durante la represión cultural que acompañó al régimen de Pinochet entre 1973 y 1990. A pesar de lo anterior, hoy en día observamos un resurgimiento de la cueca brava, el cual está asociado al regreso a la democracia en Chile en la década de 1990. Utilizando una visión informada por la geografía y el sentido de lugar, examinamos el resurgimiento de la cueca brava en Santiago con la finalidad de comprender cómo las tradiciones musicales del pasado ofrecen sustento para la construcción de identidades chilenas contemporáneas. Para ello intentamos caracterizar el movimiento de cueca brava actual empleando observación participante, análisis lírico y entrevistas semiestructuradas aplicadas a cuequeros en Santiago de Chile. Desde un punto de vista teórico, nuestro trabajo está basado en el concepto de comunidades imaginadas de Benedict Anderson, la teoría de la identidad (social) y la noción de memoria cultural de Jan Assmann. Luego de examinar cómo los cuequeros interactúan con la memoria, la historia, y el lugar, proponemos que las construcciones socio-espaciales del resurgimiento contemporáneo de la cueca brava generan nuevas identidades individuales y colectivas fortalecidas por una relación dialógica entre el pasado y el presente.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The uneven geography of asylum and humanitarian relief: place-based precarity for Central American migrant youth in the United States judicial system

  2023-01-16 · 1 citations

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• The Cuerpo-Territorio of Displacement: A Decolonial Feminist Geopolitics of Re-Existencia

  Geopolitics · 2023-06-26 · 20 citations

  article

  In this article we examine the root causes and consequences of forced displacement in Guerrero, Mexico. Drawing upon Latin American and Caribbean decolonial feminist thought, we use ‘cuerpo-territorio’ (body-territory) as a lens for understanding multiscalar violence in the region. This centres the experiences of women and children, key figures both in the (re)production of embodied, communal, and territorial ties and in the phenomenon of forced displacement. Their testimonials complicate understandings of internal migration in Mexico and asylum-seeking in the US, disrupting typical re/victimising narratives while acknowledging the interconnected, intimate-global violences these women and youth often face. In connection with ‘cuerpo-territorio’, we incorporate the decolonial concept of ‘re-existencia’ (re-existence) to show how those suffering displacement actively transform possibilities for being-in-the-world. In conversation with feminist geographic work on oppositional resistance, resilience, and re-working, we explain ‘re-existencia’ as solidarity practices that move beyond mere survival. Instead, these practices draw on longstanding indigenous ways of being to infuse new life into territories dispossessed through violence. This article aims to deepen dialogue with feminist geographic literatures outside of the Anglo-centric canon, and calls for greater attention to Latin American and Caribbean decolonial epistemologies in analyses of displacement in the Americas.

  PublisherDOI

• Reclaiming Cueca: The Brava Tradition and Imagined Identities Among Santiago’s Cuequeros / Re-significando la Cueca: la tradición brava e identidades imaginadas entre cuequeros de Santiago

  Journal of Latin American geography · 2023-05-01

  articleSenior author

  En Chile, durante los 1970, la dictadura militar de Pinochet cooptó la cueca Campesina como símbolo nacional, lo que culminó en 1979 al ser declarada oficialmente como la música y danza nacional. En paralelo a ello, se intentó borrar su contraparte folclórica urbana: la cueca brava. La cueca brava permaneció en gran medida oculta de la vida pública chilena durante la represión cultural que acompañó al régimen de Pinochet entre 1973 y 1990. A pesar de lo anterior, hoy en día observamos un resurgimiento de la cueca brava, el cual está asociado al regreso a la democracia en Chile en la década de 1990. Utilizando una visión informada por la geografía y el sentido de lugar, examinamos el resurgimiento de la cueca brava en Santiago con la finalidad de comprender cómo las tradiciones musicales del pasado ofrecen sustento para la construcción de identidades chilenas contemporáneas. Para ello intentamos caracterizar el movimiento de cueca brava actual empleando observación participante, análisis lírico y entrevistas semiestructuradas aplicadas a cuequeros en Santiago de Chile. Desde un punto de vista teórico, nuestro trabajo está basado en el concepto de comunidades imaginadas de Benedict Anderson, la teoría de la identidad (social) y la noción de memoria cultural de Jan Assmann. Luego de examinar cómo los cuequeros interactúan con la memoria, la historia, y el lugar, proponemos que las construcciones socio-espaciales del resurgimiento contemporáneo de la cueca brava generan nuevas identidades individuales y colectivas fortalecidas por una relación dialógica entre el pasado y el presente.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• CAREER: Rural Transformation and Latino Transnational Migration and Settlement in the U.S. South

  NSF · $252k · 2008–2012

• Geographies of Displacement: Youth and Migration

  NSF · $500k · 2020–2025

Frequent coauthors

• Janet Henshall Momsen

  18 shared

• Caroline Faria

  The University of Texas at Austin

  8 shared

• Sarah A. Blue

  6 shared

• Kate Swanson

  Dalhousie University

  6 shared

• Valentina Glockner Fagetti

  4 shared

• Lindsey Carte

  4 shared

• Alicia Danze

  The University of Texas at Austin

  3 shared

• Velvet Nelson

  3 shared