Dr. Kimberly M. Soriano studies how spatial policing technologies such as gang injunctions, anti-encampment zones, and anti-prostitution corridors in Latinx Los Angeles affect gendered and racialized communities such as youth of color, unhoused people and sex workers. Simultaneously she looks at cultural production and fugitive care webs that actively refuses disposability of community members. 

 

Soriano’s current book project titled, Gendered Enclosures and Feminist Fugitivities in Latinx Los Angeles further unpacks how places deemed geographies of suciedad are first devalued through criminalization (labeled as gang territories, drug markets, or prostitution zones) which justifies both police intervention and subsequent capital investment that displaces original residents. Throughout, Soriano emphasizes that cultural production within gentrifying landscapes refuses banishment by maintaining cultural memory, creating alternative economies of value, providing visual disruptions to whitewashing and establishes forms of placemaking that refuse displacement.

 

Soriano’s second project focuses on how Los Angeles Latino political leaders weaponize moral panics surrounding safety and care toward criminalization of Black and Latina sexual laborers. Her work has been published in Transgender Studies Quarterly and Sexuality Research and Social Policy Journal. Her public facing writing can be found at Los Angeles Public Press.