Education

Since 10/2026	Research Stay, International Graduate College 'Temporalidades de Futuro' (Temporalities of Future), Berlin
Since 09/2023	PhD Candidate in Social Anthropology, Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS), Southeast
05/2025 – 07/2025	Diploma in International Labour Migration: Economics, Politics and Ethics. University of Oxford
09/2020 – 08/2022	Master’s in Cultural Studies, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (EL COLEF)
08/2008 – 08/2013	Bachelor's Degree in Tourism, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México (UAEM)

Work experience

09/2022 – 06/2023	Project Director at Partería y Medicinas Ancestrales A.C. (Midwifery and Ancestral Medicines Civil Association). Tijuana, B.C.
02/2023 – 05/2023	Researcher for the Project "Reducing Organisational Vulnerability of Women". Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, University of the West of England, the British Council, the Newton Fund & CONACYT
10/2022 – 03/2023	Digital Media Collaborator for the Project Menstruación Digna en Escenarios de Movilidad (Dignified Menstruation in Mobility Scenarios)

Project: "Between Dream and Reality: Labor and Migratory Trajectories of Trimmers in the Cannabis Farms of Humboldt, California"

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Supervisor: Dr. Claudia C. Zamorano Villarreal

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What happens when the work season ends on California's cannabis farms? This project begins with that question to shift the focus from work to the time that follows it: rest. Through a multi-sited ethnography conducted in California and various locations in Mexico, I follow the trajectories of marijuana plant trimmers—who are foreigners—to understand how they construct life projects within the interstices of highly flexible and informal economies.

Rest emerges as a social space where the demands of the labor market are partially suspended and alternative possible futures are trialed. The income earned during the work seasons allows many individuals to sustain periods dedicated to biographical experimentation: opening a cacao shop, launching artistic projects, growing food, exploring spiritual practices, or simply regaining control over their own free time. In this sense, rest functions as a laboratory from which individuals reconfigure their aspirations and redefine the meaning of work, producing life horizons that exceed the logic of permanent productivity.

However, these possibilities are not distributed homogeneously. From an intersectional perspective, I analyze how gender, nationality, class, and migratory status unevenly shape the capacity to imagine, sustain, and materialize these futures. Furthermore, the search for autonomy and freedom is sustained, precisely, by intense, flexible, and uncertain forms of labor, which are often situated on the margins of legality.

By following the mobilities of trimmers beyond the farms, this project proposes an anthropology of the future centered on the daily practices through which they produce spaces for reinvention. In a context of increasing labor flexibilization and global mobility, their experiences anticipate emerging ways of inhabiting work, rest, and the imagination of the future.

Reyes Díaz, M. (2023). Gestación en movilidad por México: Desafíos de la vulnerabilidad y acceso a los derechos. Women Org. Vulnerability. https://vulneraorgmujeres.com/gestacion-en-movilidad-por-mexico-desafios-de-la-vulnerabilidad-y-acceso-a-los-derechos/

Reyes Díaz, M. (2022). La migración laboral de las mujeres indígenas chiapanecas a la Riviera Maya. Nexos. https://migracion.nexos.com.mx/autor/maricela-reyes-diaz/

Reyes Díaz, M. (2022). Somos mujeres, indígenas y migrantes: La resignificación de la pertenencia étnica durante el proceso de inserción laboral en la industria turística de Playa del Carmen (Tesis de maestría, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte.