Rubén  Hernández-León

Professor of Sociology; Director, Latin American Institute
Department: Department of Sociology
rubenhl@soc.ucla.edu
Website
Keywords: Latin America, Mexico, Immigration, Migrations

Rubén Hernández-León is Professor of Sociology at UCLA, Director of the UCLA Latin American Institute, and Co-Chair of the Master of Arts in Latin American Studies. He previously directed the UCLA Center for Mexican Studies (2009-2021). He is the author of Metropolitan Migrants: The Migration of Urban Mexicans to the United States (UC Press, 2008), which received the Thomas and Znaniecki best book award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association in 2010. He is also coauthor of Skills of the “Unskilled”: Work and Mobility among Mexican Migrants (UC Press, 2015), which received the best book award (co-winner) from the Section on Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility of the American Sociological Association in 2016, and co-editor of New Destinations: Mexican Immigration in the United States (Russell Sage Foundation, 2005). His research focuses on new developments of Mexico-U.S. migration and the role of the migration industry in international migration. He is currently working on a book based on a 25-year study of a new destination of Mexican immigration in the U.S. South and a series of papers on the migration industry operating the H-2 visa temporary migrant labor program. He guest-edited a special issue of the journal Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos on return migration from the U.S. to Mexico with a focus on children, families, and schools. His articles have been published in Social Forces, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Work and Occupations, Social Science Quarterly, International Migration Review, Mondi Migranti, Hommes & Migrations, Southern Rural Sociology, Revue Géographie et Cultures, Traces, Ciudades, Vetas, Estudios Sociológicos, Trayectorias, ConFines, and several edited volumes in Spanish, English, French, Italian, Chinese, and Japanese. He is Associate Editor of the University of California Press journal Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos and a Past Chair of the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association.