The central concerns of my research and teaching include: labor and class formation, racialization, the production of urban space, nationalism, the politics of citizenship, and transnational social processes, especially migration. My ethnographic research explores the social productions of racialized and spatialized difference in the experiences of transnational Mexican migrant workers within the space of the U.S. nation-state. More specifically, I examine transnational urban conjunctural spaces that link the U.S. and Latin America as a standpoint of critique from which to interrogate U.S. nationalism, political economy, racialized citizenship, and immigration law. This work contributes to a reconceptualization of Latin American, Latino, and "American" ( U.S. ) Studies. Likewise, I am interested in the methodological problems of ethnographic research practice and the limits of anthropological disciplinary forms of knowledge and modes of representation. My current research concerns the politics of race and immigration in relation to the Homeland Security State and the so-called "War on Terrorism".

Representative Publications:

2002. “Migrant ‘Illegality’ and Deportability in Everyday Life” in Annual Review of Anthropology #31

2003. Latino Crossings:Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and the Politics of Race and Citizenship (Routledge; co-authored with Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas)

2005. Working the Boundaries: Race, Space, and “Illegality” in Mexican Chicago (Duke University Press)

2006. Racial Transformations: Latinos and Asians Remaking the United States (Duke University Press)

2007a. “The Production of Culprits: From Deportability to Detainability in the Aftermath of ‘Homeland Security’” in Citizenship Studies Volume 11, Number 5

2007b. “The Stakes of an Anthropology of the United States ” in CR: The New Centennial Review Volume 7, Number 2

Forthcoming, 2009. The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement (Duke University Press; co-edited with Nathalie Peutz)

In Progress, n.d. The Spectacle of Terror: Immigration, Race, and the Homeland Security State