Culture

Farianny Gonzalez-Sanchez

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

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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.

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