The Center for Research on Latinos in a Global Society  (CRLGS) was formed in the 1999-2000 academic year.  In the four years since its founding, the Center has hosted a research colloquia series, published a series of working papers, provided grants for graduate and undergraduate students, and coordinated a series of focused research groups of faculty and graduate students.

Over the next several years, CRLGS research projects will assess the political and social incorporation of Latinos in Orange County and measure community attitudes towards resources and barriers.

Four interrelated activities will provide the foundation to develop a focused research agenda: 

Each  of the above components of the project will develop a statistical portrait of the status and conditions of Orange County Latinos, which can be compared to Orange County Latinos and other County racial/ethnic groups;  and, in some cases, to disaggregate the Latino experience along key potential internal cleavages, such as national origin or nativity that can identify data gaps.

Orange County  is an area that offers a rich and largely untapped Latino population (long-term residents and recent arrivals) for analysis, which can provide Center researchers with opportunities to develop a greater understanding of Latinos in the area through comparison to those on the national stage.

Latinos have been part of the county's mosaic for well over two centuries but only recently have they achieved a sufficient population concentration and community-level organization to routinely shape political outcomes.

Orange County's Latino population is increasingly diverse with Salvadorans and Guatemalans joining Mexican Americans. Because of high rates of Latino immigration to the county over the past 25 years, many are at risk of intergenerational disadvantage unless they organize to ensure their incorporation and gain access to social and educational services.

The CRLGS is affiliated with the University of California eScholarship Repository. The eScholarship Repository offers faculty a central location for depositing any research or scholarly output deemed appropriate by their participating University of California research unit, center, or department, including working papers and pre-publication scholarship.  The repository, sponsored by the California Digital Library, provides persistent access and makes the content easily discoverable. The CDL’s eScholarship program’s mission is to facilitate and support scholar-led innovations in scholarly communication and is providing this and other services in response to an expressed need for alternative publishing mechanisms. The UC Office of the President/CDL initiative stands to benefit the entire university and could profoundly affect scholarly communication and publication.  The CDL currently holds in its Web site’s repository six of  the sixteen CRLGS Working Papers :  http://repositories.cdlib.org/.crlgs/.