Diana’s work explores the interplay of housing, migration, and citizenship in cities. By focusing on the linked housing struggles of low-income citizens and noncitizens of color, she interrogates what their shared positioning at the urban margins tells us about the nature of citizenship in the city. Empirically, she analyzes their experiences with housing precarity and displaceability as well as their visions for social change.

Diana’s first major research project ethnographically studied the political claims of Brazilian and migrant squatters forming a fragile coalition in central São Paulo, Brazil. She is currently working on an oral history project of a bilingual tenant organizing initiative in the Southwest Bronx called CASA (Community Action for Safe Apartments) that has since 2005 fought for local residents’ access to affordable, stable, and dignified housing. This projects’ interviews are made available at the website of the Housing Justice Oral History Project. Her work has been published in journals such as Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, Migration Studies, and Citizenship Studies.