by Alexis Yrigoyen, McNair Scholar — Cal Poly Pomona Women’s Empowerment Fund Recipient
ABOUT THIS SHORT PROJECT
Alexis Yrigoyen is conducting a multi-sited ethnographic research project examining how Basque identity is maintained and transmitted across generations and geographic regions in the United States. As a McNair Scholar at Cal Poly Pomona under the mentorship of Dr. Philippe Duhart — a Basque scholar and advisor to CSU Bakersfield’s Institute for Basque Studies — Yrigoyen brings both academic rigor and personal heritage to her work.
Her research employs a mixed-methods approach: fieldwork at Basque community events in Chino, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Bakersfield; survey data exploring variables such as generational status and cultural participation; and in-depth interviews that offer rich, personal insight into identity and cultural transmission. The Chino Basque Club serves as her primary research site, with additional field visits to events including Jaialdi in Idaho.
Yrigoyen’s findings will be made available through Cal Poly Pomona’s Bronco ScholarWorks repository and the broader CSU ScholarWorks network, offering a resource for Basque clubs, educators, and cultural organizers. This research is deeply personal — as a woman with Basque heritage whose family experienced cultural loss through migration and assimilation, she is committed to using her work to uplift and empower future generations.
WHY IT MATTERS
Every generation, the question gets a little harder to answer: how do you stay Basque when you weren’t born there, don’t speak the language, and live thousands of miles from the homeland? Yrigoyen isn’t just asking that question academically — she’s lived it. That combination of personal stakes and scholarly method is rare, and it produces research that actually means something to the communities being studied. The data she’s gathering from clubs, festivals, and family kitchens across California and beyond could become a real tool for cultural organizers trying to understand what’s working, what’s fading, and what to do about it.