How and with what consequences do state organizations and people come to have and exercise power? In particular, how do government institutions and people use gender, class, racial/ethnic distinctions to distribute material and cultural resources unequally?

 

These are some of the big questions that drive my work in political sociology. I examine them through the prism of international migration and citizenship over the long run because changes in political jurisdiction and country membership often throw into relief what is not self-evident about power within a single nation-state container or in a short time span.

 

My work on migration and nationality policies in Latin America and Europe has been published in the Journal of Historical Sociology, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and Citenship Studies. I have published chapters on transnational religious networks, ethnic return migration, and Latin American migrations to Spain. I am currently working on a book about the genesis of state capacity to control migration and citizenship in Argentina, Italy, and Spain.  I’m also a co-principal investigator in a project entitled Race, Immigration and Citizenship in the Americas (RICA) that studies the links between political liberalism and racialized preferences in the immigration and nationality laws of 22 countries in the Americas since 1850.

 

My approach is cross-national and historical and focuses on the interstices of states in an international system. Given this global focus, I’m fortunate to be part of a research network that spans the United States, Latin America and Europe. Methodologically, I’ve used a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, strategically using one to supplement the other. If you’d like to know more about my scholarly work, follow the research link above or pull up my CV.

 

The flipside of my preoccupation with power is how to bring its investigation into the learning process. In the classroom, this has meant the use of case studies to illustrate political dynamics and generate useful explanations in courses like Introduction to Sociology, International Migration, Research Methods, Citizenship Matters, and Global Contrasts in Racial, Ethnic and National Formation. It has also meant original research by students in classroom courses or mentored research projects. If you’d like to reach one of my course pages follow the teaching link above.