Faculty Bio

Ronald L. Mize

Assistant Professor of Development Sociology

320 Warren Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853-7801
Email: rlm65@cornell.edu
Phone: (607) 255-2024

Training

Ph.D. 2000 University of Wisconsin, Madison (Sociology and Rural Sociology)

Areas of Interest

» sociology of Latino/a-Chicano/a studies
» critical migration studies
» comparative race and ethnic relations
» community sociology
» political economy
» cultural studies
» social theory

Research

Ronald L. Mize is currently Assistant Professor of Latino Studies and Development Sociology at Cornell University. He was the main Principal Investigator, from 2000 to 2004, for the CSU-San Marcos-San Diego Head Start Higher Education Partnership funded by the DHHS-Administration on Children Youth and Families. He has previously taught sociology, ethnic studies, and history at University of Saint Francis-Fort Wayne, CSU-San Marcos, University of California San Diego, Southwestern College, Colorado State University, and University of Wisconsin Rock County. His research is on the historical and contemporary lived experiences of Chicano/a and Mexican immigrant communities. He has published in Latino Studies Journal, Cleveland State Law Review, Ambulatory Pediatrics, Contemporary Sociology, Rural Sociology and several encyclopedias. He is currently working on two manuscripts: the first on the US-Mexico Bracero Program as recollected by former contract workers and the second, a history of the US consumption of Mexican immigrant labor from 1942 to the present (with Alicia Swords and Chris Zepeda). Mize's scholarly research focuses on the historical origins of racial and class oppression in the lives of Mexicano/as residing in the United States. Due to the reliance on Mexican labor in the rural industries of agriculture, mining, and railroad construction, his historical research explores the class and race formations of Anglo-Chicano relations as they relate to these sectors of rural spaces and the economy. He investigates the degree to which contemporary immigrant labor is informed by the history of Mexican incorporation into the rural United States. Mize seeks to understand the underlying assumptions about nation, race, identity, gender and class in how the public forms our opinions about immigration and part of his hope is to carve out a new paradigm for understanding both the political economy and culture of immigration as well as its interconnections.

Current research projects include:
» A social history of the U.S.-Mexico Bracero Program, 1942-1964
» Mexican immigrant labor from 1942 to the present
» Critical analysis of US Census data on "Hispanics/Latinos" with an emphasis on the "Latinization" of the rural U.S.

Selected Publications

Mize, Ronald L. (Forthcoming 2006). "Mexican Contract Workers and the U.S. Capitalist Agricultural Labor Process." Rural Sociology. Spring.

Mize, Ronald. (2005). "Reparations for Mexican Braceros? Lessons Learned from Japanese and African American Attempts at Redress." Cleveland State Law Review, LatCrit.