Şeyma Özdemir (she/her) is a fourth-year PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research examines how U.S. child labor law produces “tiered childhoods,” where farmworker children—especially Mexican American, Indigenous, and migrant youth—are pushed to balance schooling and labor under conditions of economic precarity and immigration enforcement. Through interviews, ethnography, and archival research, she analyzes how families and institutions navigate tensions between work, education, and survival, highlighting how policy shapes inequality and access to schooling.

Şeyma organizes with farmworker movements and food mutual aid groups. She holds a BA in Political Science and International Relations from Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey, and an MA in Sociology from Binghamton University.