CCIS Associate Director, Associate Professor of Sociology, Gildred Chair in U.S.-Mexican Relations, UCSD
Center for Comparative Immigration Studies
University of California at San Diego
La Jolla, CA 92093-0548
Email: dfitzgerald@ucsd.edu
Telephone: (858) 822-4447
Fax: (858) 822-4432

David FitzGerald’s CV »

David FitzGerald’s research program aims to understand the laws and policies regulating international migration as a total system of interactions among actors in countries of origin and destination. He seeks to explain how and why legal norms are diffused, the social origins of policy variation across time and place, and how the application of policy is experienced by actors in daily life.

Research Expertise

International migration, nationalism, transnationalism, comparative immigration and nationality law

Geographical Regions of Specialization

Mexico, USA, Canada, Cuba

Current Research Projects

Race, Immigration, and Citizenship in the Americas

What explains patterns of racial and national origin preferences in immigration and citizenship policy in the Americas over the last 150 years? Most scholars argue that the end of discrimination against particular groups is caused by the global triumph of a liberal political ideology and system of government. Yet if liberalism is incompatible with racism, why were the United States and Canada leaders in the spread of racialized policy restrictions in the Americas during the early twentieth century? Why did authoritarian Latin American regimes remove negative racial discrimination from their immigration laws around World War II, a generation beforethe United States and Canada did the same in the 1960s? This study answers those questions by creating an original database of racial and national origin preferences in the immigration and citizenship laws of the 22 major countries of the Americas since 1850. A statistical analysis of time series data is testing the extent to which specific political, demographic, and economic conditions explain levels of racialization in those policies. The quantitative analysis is complemented by case studies based on archival materials and the secondary literature of the five primary countries of immigration—the United States, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, and Cuba—and Mexico as a negative instance of a country that sought, but failed to attract, mass immigration.

The project is funded by generous grants from the National Science Foundation, the American Sociological Association’s Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline, UC Labor and Employment Research Fund, UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, UCSD Latino Studies Research Initiative, UCSD Faculty Career Development Program, and the UCSD General Campus Subcommittee on Research.

Principal Investigators: David FitzGerald, UC San Diego. David Cook-Martín, Grinnell College.

Mexican Migration Field Research Program

FitzGerald directs the Mexican Migration Field Research Program. Please click on the links below to see the project’s findings.

• Mexican Migration and the U.S. Economic Crisis: A Transnational Perspective
• Migration from the Mexican Mixteca: A Transnational Community in Oaxaca and California
• Four Generations of Norteños: New Research from the Cradle of Mexican Migration
• Mayan Journeys: The New Migration from Yucatan to the United States

Media Interview Topics

FitzGerald can provide commentary on Mexican migration to the United States and diaspora politics.

Selected Publications

“A Comparativist Manifesto for International Migration Studies,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2012.

“Citizenship à la Carte: Emigration and the Strengthening of the Sovereign State” in Politics from Afar: Transnational Diasporas and Networks, edited by Peter Mandaville and Terrence Lyons, Columbia University Press, 2012.

“Mexican Migration and the Law” in Beyond the Border: The History of Mexico-US Migration, edited by Mark Overmyer-Velázquez, pp.179-203. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2011.

“Liberalism and the Limits of Inclusion: Racialized Preferences in Immigration Laws of the Americas, 1850-2000.” (David Cook-Martín, equal co-author), Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 16(1): 7-25. 2010.

A Nation of Emigrants: How Mexico Manages its Migration. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press (2009).

“Colonies of the Little Motherland: Membership, Space, and Time in Mexican Migrant Hometown Associations,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 50(1). 2008.

“Mexican Assimilation: A Temporal and Spatial Reorientation” (Tomás Jiménez, equal co-author), W.E.B. Du Bois Review 4(2): 337-354. 2007.

“Inside the Sending State: The Politics of Mexican Emigration Control,” International Migration Review 40(2): 259-93. 2006.

“Towards a Theoretical Ethnography of Migration,” Qualitative Sociology 29(1): 1-24. 2006.

“Rethinking Emigrant Citizenship”, New York University Law Review 81(1): 90-116. 2006.

“Nationality and Migration in Modern Mexico,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31(1):171-91. 2005.

“Transnationalism in Question” (Roger Waldinger, first author), American Journal of Sociology 109(5):1177-95. 2004.

“Beyond ‘Transnationalism’: Mexican Hometown Politics at an American Labor Union,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 27(2): 228-47. 2004.

Negotiating Extra-Territorial Citizenship: Mexican Migration and the Transnational Politics of Community. Monograph series no. 2. La Jolla: CCIS, UC San Diego. 2000.

Academic Background

Ph.D. in Sociology, University of California , Los Angeles , 2005

M.A. in Sociology, University of California , Los Angeles , 2001

M.A. in Latin American Studies, University of California , San Diego , 2000

Bachelor of Journalism, University of Texas at Austin , 1995