As a feminist ethnographer, Montes’ research falls in two areas: on immigration from Mexico and Central America to the United States, and on the intersection between gender, belonging and migration. In the Spring of 2023, she will be a residential fellow at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California San Diego, where she will continue her research on the activist nature of transnational motherhood by looking at the family separation due to the U.S. deportation regime and the collective mobilization of deported mothers in Tijuana, Mexico. Her other ongoing research projects revolve around the examination of the precariousness of the social services provided to the Mexican migrant community in Philadelphia in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as examining the intersection between social inclusion, citizenship, culture production, and Latino immigrants in South Philadelphia.
