| Described by The Nation magazine as “the nation’s foremost academic expert on Mexican immigration,” Cornelius is a leading authority on immigration policies in North America, Western Europe (especially Spain), and Japan. He is also a specialist on Mexican politics and development. He is the author, co-author, or editor of 235 publications dealing with these subjects. He is a Past President of the Latin American Studies Association. He founded UCSD’s Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies in 1979 and directed it from 1979-1994 and 2001-2003. He is also the founding director of UCSD’s Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, established in 1999, which conducts comparative research on international migration and immigration policy, especially in the North American, Western European, and Asia-Pacific regions. His Ph.D. (in political science) is from Stanford University.
He has conducted field research in Mexico since 1962, in the United States since 1978, and in Spain since 1992. Since 2004 he has led the UCSD-based Mexican Migration Field Research and Training Program, which conducts fieldwork annually in Mexican communities of high emigration and U.S. receiving communities.
He was Professor of Political Science at MIT from 1971-1979 and he has been a visiting professor at Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Oxford, El Colegio de México, the University of Tokyo, and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and a visiting Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is a Research Fellow of the Institute for the Study of Labor (Bonn, Germany) and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (New York). He has taught at UCSD since 1979, most recently teaching courses on the comparative politics of immigration and field research methods. In 2003 he received the UCSD Alumni Association’s Distinguished Teaching Award, and in 2005, the UCSD Academic Senate’s Distinguished Teaching Award and the UCSD Latino Students’ Award for Faculty Mentoring.
His current research projects include a comparative study of the impacts of immigration control policies on Mexico-to-U.S. migration and Ecuadorean/Moroccan migration to Spain, studies of migration from traditional and recently emerged migrant-sending communities in rural Mexico, and a study of political integration among U.S.-based Mexican immigrants. His current research is supported by the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, the Tinker Foundation, the Foundation for Population, Migration, and Environment (Switzerland), and the Fundación BBVA (Spain).
His recent books include Controlling Immigration: A Global Perspective (co-author/co-editor; 2nd ed., Stanford University Press, 2004); Impacts of Border Enforcement on Mexican Migration: The View from Sending Communities (co-author/editor; CCIS/Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007); Mayan Journeys: The New Migration from Yucatán to the United States (co-author/editor, CCIS/Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007), Reforming the Administration of Justice in Mexico (co-author/co-editor, University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), and Four Generations of Norteños: New Research from the Cradle of Mexican Migration ((co-author/editor, CCIS/Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2008).
His research has been featured in The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Times of London, Newsweek, US News, The Chronicle of Higher Education, NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition,” PBS’ NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, BBC World Service, CNN Presents, CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” NBC Nightly News, and other major media outlets. |
