Cecilia Menjívar
Cecilia Menjívar
Distinguished Professor and Dorothy L. Meier Social Equities Chair
Office: 218 Haines Hall
Email: menjivar@soc.ucla.edu
Phone: 310-267-4928
Biography
I focus on the structural roots of inequalities and how individuals’ social locations shape their responses to such conditions. The general theoretical strand connecting my work centers on the state and its actions (as well as inactions, neglect, and abandonment), with a focus on how state power manifests–through its legal regimes, bureaucracies, institutions, agencies, and agents–in the microprocesses of everyday life. Substantively, I examine how state power interacts with individuals’ social locations in immigrant families, access to health care, work, and employment, interactions with enforcement agencies and judicial systems, and religious communities. These themes organize my main lines of empirical work: a) the legal, institutional, and community contexts that immigrants (mostly Central Americans) encounter (mostly) in the United States, and b) the judicial system failures and state neglect 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
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 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.
Edited Books (past 5 years):
Deisy Del Real and Cecilia Menjívar (Eds.) 2024. The Tools of Autocracy Across the Globe. American Behavioral Scientist
Cecilia Menjívar and Krista Perreira. (Eds.) 2022. Undocumented and Unaccompanied: Children of Migration in the European Union and the United States. London: Routledge (based on the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies special issue)
2019 Cecilia Menjívar, Marie Ruiz and Immanuel Ness. (Eds.) 2019. The Oxford Handbook of Migration Crises. Oxford University Press. (Listed in “Election 2020 Resources from Oxford University Press.)
Articles (2022-present)
Forth Cecilia Menjívar. “The Long Arm of Liminal Immigration Laws.” Iowa Law Review (editors and board reviewed)
Forth Deisy Del Real and Cecilia Menjívar. “The Tools of Autocracy Worldwide: Authoritarian Networks, the Façade of Democracy, and Neo-repression. American Behavioral Scientist
2024 Cecilia Menjívar and Andrea Gómez Cervantes. “Maya Guatemalans Seeking Asylum: Race and Gender in a Continuum of State Control.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
2024 Cecilia Menjívar. “Publicly Engaged Sociological Research for Immigrant Well-Being.” American Behavioral Scientist https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642231217626
2023 Cecilia Menjívar and Nicholas Tinoco. “The Long Arm of Arizona’s SB 1070: Antecedents and Far-Reaching Spillover Effects.” Oxford Bibliographies in Latino Studies. Ilan Stavans, Editor in Chief. New York: Oxford University Press
2023 Cecilia Menjívar. “State Categories, Bureaucracies of Displacement, and Possibilities from the Margins.” ASA Presidential Address. American Sociological Review, 88 (1): 1-23
- Spanish translation: “Categorías estatales, burocracias de desplazamiento y posibilidades desde los márgenes.” Estudios Sociólogicos de El Colegio de México, 42 (1): 1-32, 2023
2023 Cecilia Menjívar and *Leydy Diossa-Jiménez. “Blocking the Law from Within: Familysm Ideologies as Obstacles in VAW Laws in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.” Latin American Research Review, 58 (3): 501-518 (Lead article)
2023 *Leydy Diossa-Jiménez and Cecilia Menjívar. “Devaluing Women’s Lives Through Law: Familyism Ideologies in Abortion and Violence Against Women Laws in El Salvador.” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 30 (1): 115-139
2022 Eugenio Sosa, Cecilia Menjívar, and Paul Almeida. “Elections and Social Movements in Honduras in the Central American Context.” Revista Mexicana de Política Exterior, 122 (enero-abril): 43-61
2022 Cecilia Menjívar, Victor Agadjanian, and *Byeongdon Oh. “The Contradictions of Liminal Legality: Economic Attainment and Civic Engagement of Central American Immigrants on Temporary Protected Status.” Social Problems, 69 (3): 678-698
2022 Cecilia Menjívar. “Possibilities for Sociological Research to Reduce Inequalities: Observations from the Immigration Scholarship.” (Editors reviewed) Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, 8: 1-6
2022 Irene Bloemraad and Cecilia Menjívar. “Precarious Times, Professional Tensions: The Ethics of Migration Research and the Drive for Scientific Accountability.” International Migration Review, 56 (1): 4-32 (Lead article)
2022 Victor Agadjanian, *Byeongdon Oh, and Cecilia Menjívar. “(Il)legality and Subjective Well-Being: Central Asian Migrant Women in Russia.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 48 (1): 53-73
Awards & Grants
Awards
2024 Jessie Bernard Award, American Sociological Association, for significant cumulative work done throughout a professional career demonstrating broad feminist impact.
2024 Public Understanding of Sociology Award, American Sociological Association, for exemplary contributions to advance the public understanding of sociology, sociological research, and scholarship among the public
2023 Elected W.E.B. DuBois Fellow, American Academy of Political & Social Science
2020 Distinguished Career Award, International Migration Section, American Sociological Association
2021 Social Justice Hero honoree, Museum of Social Justice, Los Angeles, CA (recognition for scholarship on and advocacy for Central American immigrants)
2018 2017 Feminist Criminology Best Article Award for “”Humane” Immigration Enforcement.”
2017 Andrew Carnegie Fellowship
2017 Elected to Sociological Research Association
2017 Louis Wirth Best Article Award, Honorable Mention, ASA International Migration Section for “Transformative Effects of Immigration Law.”
2014 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship
2013 Fragmented Ties, listed as one of the 12 most influential books on the family since 2000 (Contemporary Sociology)
2015 Public Sociology Award, International Migration Section, ASA
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.
