Actor Details

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, Chicano/ao studies, and history at University of Saint
Francis-Fort Wayne, CSU-San Marcos, University of California San Diego, Southwestern
College, 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, 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. His 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. Mize investigates the degree to which contemporary immigrant labor is
informed by the history of Mexican incorporation into the rural United States. He 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.