Cecilia Menjívar
Professor and Dorothy L. Meier Social Equities Chair
In general, I focus on the structural roots of inequalities and on how individuals’ social locations shape their responses to such conditions. The theoretical strand connecting my work centers on the state and its actions: how state power manifests--through legal regimes, bureaucracies, and formal institutions--in the microprocesses of everyday life in various contexts. This thread links my two empirical areas of work: contexts that immigrants (mostly Central Americans) encounter (mostly) in the United States and the judicial system failures that sustain gender-based violence in Central America.
Degrees
Ph.D., Sociology, University of California, Davis
M.A., Sociology, University of California, Davis
M.S., International Education, University of Southern California
B.A., Psychology and Sociology, University of Southern California
Awards
2018 2017 Feminist Criminology Best Article Award for ""Humane" Immigration Enforcement."
2017 Andrew Carnegie Fellowship
2017 Elected to Sociological Research Association
2014 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship
2014 Best Article Award, Latino/a Section, ASA, for Legal Violence
2013 Fragmented Ties, listed as one of the 12 most influential books on the family since 2000 (Contemporary Sociology)
2013 Best Article Award, Latino/a Studies Section, Latin American Studies Association, for Legal Violence
2012 Distinguished Scholarship Award, Pacific Sociological Association, for Enduring Violence.
2012 Mirra Komarovsky Book Award, Eastern Sociological Society, for Enduring Violence.
2011 Hubert Herring Book Award, Pacific Coast Council on Latin American Studies, Enduring Violence.
2011 Outstanding Doctoral Mentor Award (Arizona State University, university-wide award)
2010 Julian Samora Distinguished Career Award, Latinos/as Section, ASA.
2007 Distinguished Contribution to Research Award, Latinos/as Section, ASA.
2002 Outstanding Mentor Award, Graduate Women’s Association, Arizona State University.
2002 Choice Outstanding Academic Titles in Social and Behavioral Sciences for Fragmented Ties.
2001 William J. Goode Outstanding Book Award, Section on the Family, ASA, Fragmented Ties
2001 Honorable mention, Thomas and Znaniecki Book Award, International Migration Section, ASA, Fragmented Ties.
Selected Publications
Books
2016 Cecilia Menjívar, Leisy Abrego and Leah Schmalzbauer. Immigrant Families. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
2014 Cecilia Menjívar. Eterna Violencia: Vidas de las mujeres ladinas en Guatemala. Guatemala: Ediciones del Pensativo & FLACSO-Guatemala. (Adapted, translated from Enduring Violence)
2011 Cecilia Menjívar. Enduring Violence: Ladina Women’s Lives in Guatemala. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
2000 Cecilia Menjívar. Fragmented Ties: Salvadoran Immigrant Networks in America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Articles
Forthcoming Cecilia Menjívar, William P. Simmons, *Daniel Alvord, and *Elizabeth Salerno Valdez. “Immigration Enforcement, the Racialization of Legal Status, and Perceptions of the Police: Latinos in Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, and Phoenix in Comparative Perspective.” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race
2018 Daniel Alvord, Cecilia Menjívar, and Andrea Gómez Cervantes. "The Legal Violence in the 2017 Executive Orders: The Expansion of Immigrant Criminalization in Kansas." Social Currents https://doi-org.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/10.1177/2329496518762001
2018 *Gómez Cervantes, Andrea, *Daniel Alvord, and Cecilia Menjívar. “‘Bad Hombres:’ The Effects of Criminalizing Latino Immigrants through Law and Media in the Rural Midwest.” Migration Letters, 15 (2): 182-196
2017 Cecilia Menjívar, Juliana Morris, and Nestor Rodriguez. “The Ripple Effects of Deportations to Honduras.” Migration Studies, 6 (1): 120-139
2017 Cecilia Menjívar and Shannon Drysdale Walsh. “The Architecture of Feminicide: The State, Inequalities, and Everyday Gender Violence in Honduras.” Latin American Research Review, 52(2): 221-240
2017 Victor Agadjanian, Cecilia Menjívar, and *Natalia Zotova. “Legality, Racialization, and Immigrants’ Experiences of Ethnoracial Harassment in Russia.” Social Problems, 64 (4): 558-576
2016 Cecilia Menjívar and Sarah M. Lakhani. “Transformative Effects of Immigration Law: Migrants’ Personal and Social Metamorphoses through Regularization.” American Journal of Sociology, 121 (6): 1818-1855
2012 Cecilia Menjívar and *Leisy J. Abrego “Legal Violence: Immigration Law and the Lives of Central American Immigrants.” American Journal of Sociology, 117 (5): 1380-1421.
2011 Cecilia Menjívar. “The Power of the Law: Central Americans’ Legality and Everyday Life in Phoenix, Arizona.” Latino Studies, 9 (4): 377-395.
2008 Cecilia Menjívar. “Violence and Women’s Lives in Eastern Guatemala: A Conceptual Framework.” Latin American Research Review 43 (3): 109-136.
2007 Cecilia Menjívar and Victor Agadjanian. “Men’s Migration and Women’s Lives: Views from Rural Armenia and Guatemala.” Social Science Quarterly 88 (5): 1243-1262.
2006 Cecilia Menjívar. “Liminal Legality: Salvadoran and Guatemalan Immigrants’ Lives in the United States.” American Journal of Sociology, 111 (4): 999-1037.