Esmeralda Rubalcava Hernandez
Research Interests
- Policing and Immigration Enforcement
- Anti-Colonial and Abolitionist Racial Studies
- Decolonizing Social Work Education
- Trauma, Displacement, and Resilience
- Ethics, Power, and Resistance in Social Work Practice
Teaching Interests
- Critical and Anti-Oppressive Social Work Practice
- Race, Class, Gender
- Intersectionality
- Decolonial and Abolitionist Pedagogy
- Immigration and Border Studies
- Community Organizing and Policy Advocacy
Esmeralda J. Rubalcava Hernandez, LMSW (she/her/ella) is a Chicana bilingual/bicultural community organizer, social worker, and Ph.D. candidate in Social Work at The University of Texas at Arlington. Her scholarship and praxis are rooted in anti-colonial racial studies, with a focus on the intersections of policing, immigration systems, and anti-oppressive social work pedagogy.
Esmeralda’s professional experience includes direct service and advocacy with Black, Indigenous, and Latine communities, unaccompanied minors, survivors of domestic and intimate partner violence, survivors of trafficking, asylum seekers, refugees, and immigrant families. Her approach to social work is deeply informed by her own lived experiences and a commitment to community-based, liberatory frameworks.
As a community organizer, Esmeralda engages in grassroots efforts that challenge systemic racism, settler colonialism, and carceral logics embedded within social institutions. She works collaboratively toward racial equity and collective liberation, centering the wisdom and resilience of historically oppressed communities.
Esmeralda holds an undergraduate social work degree from St. Edward’s University and a Master of Science in Social Work from The University of Texas at Austin. She remains dedicated to transformative teaching, mentorship, and research that disrupts dominant narratives and reimagines what is possible within and beyond the academy.