Joanna Dreby

Expertise: 
Immigration, Families, Children

Joanna Dreby’s research explores family dynamics under conditions of increased globalization, with specific expertise on international migration, gender, and children.

She is author of two award-winning books Divided by Borders: Mexican Migrants and their Children (University of California Press 2010) and Everyday Illegal: When Policies Undermine Immigrant Families (University of California Press 2015), and the award-winning article "The Burden of Deportation on Children in Mexican Immigrant Families" (Journal of Marriage and Family 2012). She is co-editor of the volume Family and Work in Everyday Ethnography (Temple University Press 2013). Dr. Dreby has published more than 25 peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters on a range of topics including child care fatalities, transnational families, gender and generational relations in families, work-family balance, and the impacts of immigration enforcement policies on children.

In 2017, Dr. Dreby was a Fulbright Scholar to Costa Rica and she received a Fulbright-Garcia Robles Grant in 2004-2005 for field research in Mexico. Her research has also been funded by the Foundation for Child Development (2009-2012). She uses a variety of qualitative methods, emphasizing ethnography, comparative research and in-depth interview techniques. She has a background in social services and retains interest in community based work. Dr. Dreby received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the CUNY Graduate Center in 2007.

Recent Research Projects

• Impacts of Immigration Enforcement Policies over the Life Course
• The Health and Well-Being of U.S. Born Children Living in Mexico
• Farm Families and the Modern Food Economy: Markets and Household Strategies in Costa Rica and the United States
• Families that Farm: Sustaining Small Scale Agriculture in Upstate New York

Research Interests

• Gender and Families
• Children
• Immigration
• Transnationalism
• Latino Communities
• Latin American Studies
• Ethnography and Qualitative Methods