Dr. Beatriz Aldana Marquez

Dr. Marquez was undocumented until the early 2000s and was the first member of her family to attend and graduate high school. She has served as an informal mentor to undocumented and first generation students throughout her academic career. Her passion for social justice and immigration reform has influenced her research agenda. Her research focuses on critical Latinx sociology, immigration and deportation, and theory broadly defined. Her first book, From the Peaceable to the Barbaric: Thorstein Veblen and the Charro Cowboy (2019), addresses race, class, and gender specific to rural Mexico traditions. Her research currently focuses on Immigration Customs and Enforcement and challenges the frameworks of power that significantly and disproportionally affect Latin Americans immigrants. A portion of her immigration research was published in Ethnicities, Social Science and Medicine, and Law and Society. Further, she investigates the role of immigration lawyers and the dynamics of the U.S. immigration court system.