Veronica Martínez-Matsuda’s research agenda is motivated by the following central questions: How do those excluded from the legal and everyday rights of American citizenship because of their political status, racial identity, or class standing as low-wage workers, express civic membership and claim national belonging? And, in their actions to envision, articulate, and secure their civil rights, how do these marginal actors shape the political and sociocultural meaning of American citizenship? While her expertise in Chicanx Studies continues to ground most of her research, Martínez-Matsuda's work engages in a broader race-relational methodology and cross-regional framework. She is concerned with how agricultural workers’ experiences of disenfranchisement have varied and yet informed one another across different historical junctures, places, and relative to their specific circumstances of noncitizenship, racial subjugation, and economic exploitation.