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UC Resources on Latin American Migration

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Researchers

Name, Title	Email, Webpage	Campus
Gabriela F. Arredondo Associate Professor, Latin American and Latino Studies	gfarredo at ucsc.edu webpage	UC Santa Cruz
Research Interests: Latina/o studies; U.S. immigration history; U.S. social and cultural history; Chicana/o history; critical race and ethnicity theories; Chicana and Mexicana feminisms; “borderlands” studies; history of modern Mexico
Patricia Baquedano-Lopez Associate Professor, Language and Literacy, Society and Culture	pbl at berkeley.edu webpage	UC Berkeley
Research Interests: Her most recent research project examines the migration experiences of Yucatec Maya speakers to the Bay Area of Northern California in order to understand the socialization practices that create and promote an immigrant identity among youth and their families.
Silvia Bermudez Professor, Spanish & Portuguese	bermudez at spanport.ucsb.edu webpage	UC Santa Barbara
Research Interests: She is presently working on a book manuscript, “Rocking the Boat: The Rhythms of Immigration in Spanish Pop Music, 1984-2004” that addresses songs, pop groups and songwriters that have turned their attention to the materiality of immigration, arguing that a) it is in Spanish music where immigration is first given testimony, and other cultural productions such as literature or film will engage this reality later on; and b) the songs bear witness to the specific effects that border crossing and transnational movements have on immigrants reaching the Spanish shores.
Irene Bloemraad Assistant Professor, Sociology	bloemr at berkeley.edu webpage	UC Berkeley
Research Interests: Irene Bloemraad (Ph.D. Harvard; M.A. McGill) studies the nexus between immigration and the political system. Her recently published book, Becoming a Citizen, compares immigrants’ acquisition of citizenship and political participation in the United States and Canada. Bloemraad argues that government settlement and multiculturalism policies influence newcomers’ practice and understanding of citizenship, and such policies have lead to better outcomes in political incorporation in Canada over the last thirty years than in the United States. In the context of current debates around immigration in the United States, her work suggests that any effective immigration policy must examine not just border control, but also integration and settlement policies.
Jennifer M. Chacón Professor, School of Law	jmchacon at ucdavis.edu webpage	UC Davis
Research Interests: Jennifer Chacon was awarded her J.D. from Yale Law School. After graduation, she served as a law clerk to the Honorable Sidney R. Thomas, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. From 1999-2003, she was an attorney with Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York City. She teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure and Immigration Law.
Leo Chavez Professor, Anthropology	lchavez at uci.edu webpage	UC Irvine
Research Interests: Professor Chavez's research examines various issues related to transnational migration, including immigrant families and households, labor market participation, motivations for migration, the use of medical services, and media constructions of "immigrant" and "nation." His books include Shadowed Lives: Undocumented Immigrants in American Society (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1992, 1997 2nd edition), which provides an ethnographic account of Mexican and Central American undocumented immigrants in San Diego County, California.
Miroslava Chávez-García Associate Professor, Chicana/o Studies	chavezgarcia at ucdavis.edu webpage	UC Davis
Research Interests: Her current research interests and publications focus on youth, juvenile justice, race, and science in early twentieth-century California reform schools. Currently, she teaches courses on Chicana/o history, Latina/o history, race and juvenile justice, U.S.-Mexico border relations, and research methodologies.
Wayne Cornelius Director, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies	wcorneli at ucsd.edu webpage	UC San Diego
Research Interests: Political economy of immigration, immigration policy in advanced industrial nations, U.S.-Mexican relations, Mexican politics
David Fitzgerald Postdoctoral Fellow and Field Research Director, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies	dfitzgerald at ucsd.edu webpage	UC San Diego
Research Interests: International migration, nationalism, transnationalism
Jonathan Fox Professor, Latin American and Latino Studies	jafox at ucsc.edu webpage	UC Santa Cruz
Research Interests: Latin American and Latino politics, including issues of democratization, accountability, social movements, transnational civil society, social and environmental policy, and immigration.
Lisa Garcia-Bedolla Associate Professor, Language and Literacy, Society and Culture	lgarciab at berkeley.edu webpage	UC Berkeley
Research Interests: Lisa García Bedolla's research interests center around the civic engagement, community activity, and political incorporation of racial/ethnic groups in the United States, with a particular focus on the intersection of race, class, and gender. This interest has led her to engage in an in-depth ethnographic study of Latina/o civic engagement in two southern California communities, a large-scale experimental study of voter education and mobilization in central and southern California, and a longitudinal exploration of the civic engagement of immigrant youth in California.
James Grieshop Specialist in Cooperative Extension, Human and Community Development	jigrieshop at ucdavis.edu webpage	UC Davis
Research Interests: (1) community leadership, (2) risk perception and health and safety, (3) non-formal education, and (4) communication and adoption of innovations. Recent projects have included studies and outreach education dealing with Hispanic leadership, risk perceptions and occupational safety among farmworkers, the transnational connections of Mixtec farmworkers in California, and user adoption of research based agricultural practices. The dissemination of information through Spanish-language media and video formats is a hallmark of Grieshop's outreach program.
Ramón Grosfoguel Associate Professor, Chicano Studies	grosfogu at berkeley.edu webpage	UC Berkeley
Research Interests: Ethnic/Racial Studies, Latino Studies, International Migration, Caribbean, Latin American and Southeast Asian Societies, International Comparative Development, World-Systems, Urban Sociology, Global Cities, Caribbean Migrants in the United States and Western Europe.
Luis Guarnizo Associate Professor, Human and Community Development	leguarnizo at ucdavis.edu webpage	UC Davis
Research Interests: Economic Sociology, transnational migration, immigrant entrepreneurs, comparative international
Sylvia Guendelman Professor, Community Health and Human Development	sylviag at berkeley.edu webpage	UC Berkeley
Research Interests: Reproductive health of immigrant women; reproductive health of working women; access to health care for disadvantaged populations, including the working poor and immigrants; health along the US-Mexico border; social disparities and health; juvenile asthma
David Gutierrez Professor, History	dggutierrez at ucsd.edu webpage	UC San Diego
Research Interests: David Guitierrez focuses on Chicano history, comparative immigration and ethnicity, and the history of the citizenship. His current work focuses on the dynamic historical tension between citizens and non-citizens in the United States over the course of the twentieth century. Exploring how the forces of global capitalism often trumped the interests of exclusive nationalists in the American context, he examines the changing definition of citizenship over time, the shifting contours of the international debate over immigration, and the growing importance of non-citizens in contemporary life.
Gordon Hanson Professor, Economics	gohanson at ucsd.edu webpage	UC San Diego
Research Interests: His current research examines the international migration of high-skilled labor, the causes of Mexican migration to the United States, the consequences of immigration on labor-market outcomes in the United States, the relationship between business cycles and global outsourcing, and international trade in motion pictures. In recent work, he has studied the impact of globalization on wages, the origins of political opposition to immigration, and the implications of China's growth for the export performance of Mexico and other developing countries. His most recent book is Why Does Immigration Divide America? Public Finance and Political Opposition to Open Borders (Institute for International Economics, 2005).
Ruben Hernandez-Leon Assistance Profesor, Sociology	rubenhl at soc.ucla.edu webpage	UCLA
Research Interests: International migration and immigration, border and diaspora studies, Mexico, Latin America.
Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda Associate Professor, Chicana/o Studies	raulhinojosa at comcast.net webpage	UCLA
Research Interests: He is the author of numerous articles and books on the political economy of regional integrations in various parts of the world, including trade, investment and migration relations between the U.S., Mexico, Latin American and the Pacific Rim. He is co-author of Latinos in a Changing U.S. Economy: Comparative Perspectives on the U.S. Labor Market Since 1939 (New York: IUP/CUNY, 1991) and co-editor of Labor Market Interdependence between the United States and Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992).He has recently completed a book on the political economy of U.S.-Latin American relations in the late twentieth century including the impact of a potential Free Trade of the Americas Agreement ( Convergence and Divergence between NAFTA, Chile, and MERCOSUR: Overcoming Dilemmas of North and South American Economic Integration . Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank, 1997).
Kevin R. Johnson Dean, Professor of Law and Chicana/o Studies, and Mabie-Apallas Public Interest Law Chair, School of Law	krjohnson at ucdavis.edu webpage	UC Davis
Research Interests: Kevin R. Johnson is currently Dean, Professor of Law and Chicana/o Studies, and the Mabie-Apallas Public Interest Law Chair holder at the University of California at Davis. From 1998-2008, he served as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. He has published extensively on immigration law and policy, racial identity, and civil rights in national and international journals. Dean Johnson's book How Did You Get to Be Mexican? A White/Brown Man's Search for Identity was published in 1999 and was nominated for the 2000 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. He also has published Race, Civil Rights, and American Law A Multiracial Approach and Mixed Race America and the Law: A Reader (2002). The "Huddled Masses" Myth Immigration and Civil Rights (2004).
Susanne Jonas Lecturer, Latin American and Latino Studies	sjonas at ucsc.edu webpage	UC Santa Cruz
Research Interests: Latin American immigration and Latino communities in the U.S., comparative Latin American politics, contemporary Central America, Central American binational organizing, U.S.-Latin American cross-border issues, U.S. foreign policy in Latin America, the Left in Latin America, comparative peace processes in Central America and worldwide.
David Kyle Associate Professor, Sociology	djkyle at ucdavis.edu webpage	UC Davis
Research Interests: Economic Sociology, Cultural Sociology, Global Comparative Sociology; International Migration and Ethnicity; Transnational Social Deviance and Crime.
April Linton Assistant Professor, Sociology	aplinton at ucsd.edu webpage	UC San Diego
Research Interests: She works in three main areas: political sociology, migration and development, and comparative social change. Her research topics encompass Spanish-English bilingualism in the United States; the movement to promote coffee production that is sustainable for workers and the environment; and (with Terry Boswell) patterns of revolutions that incite large-scale social transformations. Her forthcoming publications include A Critical Mass Model of Bilingualism among US-Born Hispanics, (Social Forces), A Taste of Trade Justice: Marketing Global Social Responsibility via Fair Trade Coffee (with Cindy Liou and Kelly Ann Shaw, Globalizations), and Learning in Two Languages: Spanish-English Immersion in U.S. Public Schools (International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy). She is working on a book about dual-language education.
David Lopez Professor, Sociology	dlopez at soc.ucla.edu webpage	UCLA
Research Interests: Immigration and Ethnicity, Latin American studies, sociology of language.
Kelly Lytle Hernandez Assistant Professor, History	hernandez at history.ucla.edu webpage	UCLA
Research Interests: Professor Lytle Hernandez received her Ph.D. from UCLA in 2002. She was a UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego before joining the UCLA faculty in 2004. Her research interests are in twentieth-century U.S. history with a concentration upon race, migration, and state violence. She is currently completing a book project entitled, "MIGRA! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands," which is under contract with University of California Press.
Philip Martin Professor, Agricultural & Resource Economics	martin at primal.ucdavis.edu webpage	UC Davis
Research Interests: Martin does research on farm labor, labor migration, economic development, and immigration issues, and has testified before Congress and state and local agencies numerous times on these issues.
David Montejano Associate Professor, Ethnic Studies	davidmon at berkeley.edu webpage	UC Berkeley
Research Interests: Dr. Montejano’s major areas of interest include Comparative and Historical Sociology, Political Sociology, Social Change, Race and Ethnic Relations, and Community Studies. A native of San Antonio, he received a B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and two Masters and a Ph.D. from Yale University.
Chon Noriega Professor, Film, Television and Digital Media	cnoriega at ucla.edu webpage	UCLA
Research Interests: He is author of Shot in America: Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema (Minnesota, 2000) and editor of nine books dealing with Latino media, performance and visual art. Since 1996, he has been editor of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, the flagship journal for the field since its founding in 1970. He is series editor of A Ver: Revisioning Art History and The Chicano Archive. In July 2002, he became Director of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center.
Marjorie Orellana Associate Professor, Education	orellana at gseis.ucla.edu webpage	UCLA
Research Interests: Sociocultural approaches to the study of language, literacy, learning and identity construction; Latino immigrant children's experiences in urban school communities.
Lorena Oropeza Associate Professor, History	lboropeza at ucdavis.edu webpage	UC Davis
Research Interests: Chicano/a History; History of American Foreign Relations
David Pedersen Assistant Professor, Anthropology	dpedersen at dss.ucsd.edu webpage	UC San Diego
Research Interests: David Pedersen is an expert on relations between El Salvador and the United States, particularly the recent decades of Salvadoran migration to major US cities and the circulation of remittances in El Salvador. He is a social, cultural and historical anthropologist broadly interested in questions concerning modernity, capitalism and imperialism.
Giovanni Peri Associate Professor, Economics	gperi at ucdavis.edu webpage	UC Davis
Research Interests: He does research on Human Capital, Innovation and Growth and recently he has focused on the impact of immigration on labor markets, housing markets and productivity. In the summer 2007 he received a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Grant for the Study of International Migration.
Cecilia Rivas Assistant Professor, Latin American and Latino Studies	cmrivas at ucsc.edu webpage	UC Santa Cruz
Research Interests: Salvadoran transnationalism; media (Internet, newspapers); migration; globalization; race, ethnicity, and gender; bilingualism; consumption; El Salvador; Central America
Alex M. Saragoza Associate Professor, Chicano Studies	alexsara at berkeley.edu webpage	UC Berkeley
Research Interests: Alex M. Saragoza received his Ph.D. in Latin American history from University of California, San Diego. A specialist on modern Mexico. Saragoza's work delves into the intersections of Latin American history with that of the United States as a consequence of migration. His research has examined the structural origins of Mexican migration, focusing on the role of the state in the process of the concentration of wealth and power in Mexico. In addition, he has done research on the transnational aspects of cultural formations in Mexico, including work on Mexican cinema, radio and television. His current interests center on ideology and representation from a transnational perspective.
Felicity Schaeffer-Grabiel Assistant Professor, Feminist Studies	fsg at ucsc.edu webpage	UC Santa Cruz
Research Interests: Transnational feminism, migration, Latin American/Latino studies, Chicana/o studies, technology and the body, sexuality
Michael Peter Smith Chair, Community Studies and Development Unit	mpsmith at ucdavis.edu webpage	UC Davis
Research Interests: Michael Peter Smith's research interests are situated within the interdisciplinary field of urban studies. He has written extensively and published several influential books on cities and urbanism, global migration, and transnationalism. During the past decade he has been engaged in comparative historical and qualitative ethnographic research on the impacts of transnational socio-cultural, economic, and political practices linking cities and regions in California to other localities and regions across the globe. His current research agenda places special emphasis on the forging of transnational political ties by Mexican migrants in California and their consequences on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border.
J. Edward Taylor Professor and Director, Rural Economics of the Americas and Pacific Rim (REAP)	taylor at primal.ucdavis.edu webpage	UC Davis
Research Interests: My research is concentrated in population, microeconomic development, and farm labor. The core of my work in microeconomic development has been the application of household-farm modeling techniques to the study of a range of economic problems in less developed countries, including internal and international migration, the adoption of new agricultural technologies, preservation of biodiversity, and nutrient demand. My early work was among the first to empirically test propositions of the new economics of labor migration. Building on household-farm models, I have developed micro economy-wide (including village) models utilizing computable general equilibrium techniques. Applications of these models explore impacts of migration, policy changes, and market reforms on rural economies in a diversity of less developed country (LDC) settings. Current projects utilize these modeling techniques to examine impacts of NAFTA and agricultural policy reforms on migration and incomes in village and village-town economies in Mexico and impacts of tourism in Ecuador's Galapagos Islands and in the Bay Islands of Honduras. This modeling is supported by extensive household-farm surveys. In recent years my students have done Ph.D. and MS research involving a diversity of topics and regions that include Mexico, Central America, Ecuador's Galapagos Islands, China, Zambia, and Turkey.
Abel Jr. Valenzuela Professor, Chicana/o Studies	abel at ucla.edu webpage	UCLA
Research Interests: Professor Valenzuela holds a joint appointment in the Department of Urban Planning and the César E. Chávez Department for Chicana/o Studies. His research is primarily concerned with the issues faced by minorities and immigrants in the U.S. His work focuses on three key interrelated areas: 1) immigration and labor markets, 2) poverty and inequality, and 3) immigrant settlement patterns. His work combines ethnographic, in-depth interviews, participant observation, and quantitative methods to document and explain the processes that govern the incorporation of immigrants to the U.S. Professor Valenzuela is currently working on further publishing articles and completing a manuscript on day labor in a national context. His groundbreaking work on day labor continues to drive his primary research agenda. In addition, Professor Valenzuela is undertaking research on non-union supermarket janitors (subcontractors), immigrant-serving community based organizations, and the organizing campaigns of security guards and car wash attendants.
Roger Waldinger Distinguished Professor, Sociology	waldinge at soc.ucla.edu webpage	UCLA
Research Interests: International migration, race and ethnicity. My research concerns international migration to the United States: its social, political, and economic consequences; the policies and politics emerging in response to its advent; the links between immigrants in the United States and the countries and people they have left behind.
Miriam Wells Professor, Human and Community Development	mjwells at ucdavis.edu webpage	UC Davis
Research Interests: Political and economic anthropology, ethnicity, economic development, unionization/social movements, immigration and immigration policy, the social organization of agriculture
Patricia Zavella Professor and Chair, Latin American and Latino Studies	zavella at ucsc.edu webpage	UC Santa Cruz
Research Interests: Chicana/o-Latina/o studies, women's work and domestic labor, poverty, family, sexuality and social networks, feminist studies, ethnographic research methods, and transnational migration of Mexicana/o workers and U.S. capital
Elana Zilberg Assistant Professor, Communications	ezilberg at ucsd.edu webpage	UC San Diego
Research Interests: Elana Zilberg research interests lie at the borders of anthropology and cultural geography, and of Latino and Latin American Studies. Her current work on the policing and deportation of Salvadoran immigrant gang (affiliated, alleged and affected) youth and their reception in El Salvador, examines the production of transnational space and identity at the nexus of migration, violence and security. She also works on communication and consumption networks between immigrants in the US and their families in Latin America. She teaches courses on representation, consumption, violence, space and place, cultural poetics, globalization, neoliberalism, and ethnography.