Culture

Farianny Gonzalez-Sanchez

Beyond Choice: Power, Colonialism, and the Making of Dominican Migration

A close-up portrait of a young woman with brown eyes, wearing gold-rimmed glasses and a black disposable face mask. Her dark hair is pulled back, and she wears gold hoop earrings and a delicate gold sun pendant necklace over a light grey off-the-shoulder top. The background is softly blurred.

Farianny Gonzalez-Sanchez (she/her) is a fourth-year Professional Communication student and first-generation Dominican Canadian multidisciplinary artist. Her work is rooted in storytelling, community engagement, and the preservation of culture. First introduced to the arts through Latin dance at a young age, Farianny’s creative practice has expanded to include media production, research, and community programming that explores themes of diaspora, identity, and cultural memory.

Her academic work draws from Caribbean studies, political communication, race, and cultural theory to examine how power, migration, and history shape lived experiences. Alongside her studies, she has worked with community arts organizations facilitating creative workshops for marginalized youth and currently serves as a director for a student-led hip hop dance team, where she develops curriculum, leads programming, and secures funding for student initiatives. Through both research and creative practice, Farianny hopes to pursue a career in the arts and culture sector, using communication and storytelling to build community and amplify underrepresented voices.

This project examines mass migration from the Dominican Republic to the United States between the 1950s to the 2000s through a post-colonial and transnational lens. While migration is often portrayed as an individual pursuit of opportunity, this research highlights how political intervention, economic restructuring, and racial ideologies shaped the conditions that pushed many Dominicans to leave their homes. Drawing on historical archives, literature, media documentation, and migration theory, the study situates Dominican migration within broader histories of U.S.–Caribbean relations and global inequality. By centering these structural forces, the project challenges simplified narratives about immigrants and reframes migration as a response to intertwined political, economic, and historical pressures.

Lightning Talk

Browse More Culture Research

More Projects

A close-up portrait of a man with dark hair and medium skin tone, looking directly at the viewer with a calm expression. He wears black rectangular-framed glasses, with subtle green light reflections on the lenses. He is dressed in an olive green collared shirt, and the background is a softly blurred, light-colored interior.

Hariram Satkunarajan

The Impact of PR on a Game's Performance
A portrait of a young woman with warm skin and long, wavy black hair parted down the middle, smiling broadly with her teeth showing. She is wearing a dark blue-grey corduroy button-up shirt over a white t-shirt and a gold heart-shaped necklace. The background is a plain, light-colored wall.

Saumya Banugoban

Y2K Nostalgia Marketing & Gen Z
A professional portrait of a woman with long, dark, center-parted hair, brown eyes, and a light pink lip gloss. She wears a dark gray knit sweater and has a gentle smile, against a softly blurred background.

Akasha Alam

The Infinite Scroll: Trend Culture, AI, and the Loss of Brand Authenticity in Digital Communication
Scroll to Top