Hazel Velasco Palacios (she/her) is a PhD candidate at the Pennsylvania State University. Hazel’s dissertation examines how structural and symbolic violence shape healthcare access for Latina/o immigrant farmworker families in Pennsylvania’s dairy and mushroom industries. Using an ethnographic approach, she analyzes how legal precarity, particularly deportability and liminal legality, and gendered labor expectations affect family wellbeing and access to care. Her research draws from fieldwork conducted in counties with large farmworker populations, including over two years of participant observation in food pantries, mobile clinics, and mutual aid networks.

The study highlights the everyday strategies farmworker families use to navigate healthcare exclusions while critically examining the limits of grassroots resilience in the face of systemic neglect.

Hazel’s work has been published in The Journal of Rural Health, Rural Sociology, and Women’s Studies Quarterly and The Conversation. She serves on the advisory council of Mighty Writers El Futuro Kennett and collaborates with immigrant-serving nonprofits.

Her research has been supported by the ASA DDRIG and the National Children’s Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety