Zaragosa Vargas conducts research in nineteenth-century, twentieth-century, and recent Latino history and American labor history. It includes the fields of working class history; work, race, gender, and class; the history of working women; transnational labor migration; comparative race relations; radical and social movements; and social and political history. Vargas is currently working on a history of Mexican Americans in the early civil rights movement, with an emphasis on labor rights.