Cecilia Menjívar

Cecilia Menjívar​ (PhD, UC Davis; Foundation Distinguished Professor) specializes in immigration, gender, family dynamics, social networks, religious institutions, and broad conceptualizations of violence. She works in two main empirical areas: the impacts of the legal regime and laws on immigrants, and the effects of living in contexts of multisided violence on individuals, especially women. Her work on immigration concerns mainly on the United States, where she focuses on Central American immigrants, whereas her work on violence is centered on Latin America, mostly Central America. A thread that connects her areas of work is her interest is how state power manifests itself, through legal regimes and formal institutions and bureaucracies, in the microprocesses of everyday life. Her work has appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Social Problems, International Migration Review, Ethnic & Racial Studies, among other journals. Her most recent publications include the edited volume, Constructing Immigrant Illegality: Critiques, Experiences, and Responses (Cambridge, 2014) and the book, Immigrant Families (Polity 2016). Areas: Immigration, Gender, Family, Violence, and Political Sociology.