High Skilled Immigration in the United States in an Age of Globalization

González, Marcela F. 2023. (Book manuscript based on my dissertation). 190 pages.

The book is based on my dissertation. I aim to explain the contradictory and distinctive policy processes and laws that shape high-skilled immigration, focusing on a crucial, albeit understudied, area of inquiry: how and why state immigration laws, temporary and permanent visas, shape the complex and cumbersome process to attain lawful permanent residency for high-skilled immigrants. Specifically, I plan to explain why high-skilled immigrants go through a variety of dissimilar legal processes and an array of experiences to achieve legal permanent status. Furthermore, I analyze the effects of the diversification of visa policies into permanent and temporary since the 1990s on high-skilled immigrants’ legal, work, and family trajectories. I published two articles based on my dissertation in the leading journals in the field, Ethnic and Racial Studies and International Migration.



Referred and Invited Research Presentations


Protracted Crisis, Temporary Legal Statuses, and Immigrants’ Rights in the United States

MIGCITPOL Workshop: Governing Migrant Citizenship Rights in Times of Protracted Crises, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. Buenos Aires, 20 de Julio, 2023.



High Skilled Immigrants’ Pathways from Risky to Secure Legality in the United States

Invited lecture, Department of Sociology, John Jay College, City University of New York. New York, NY, March 5, 2020.



High Skilled Immigrants’ Pathways from Risky to Secure Legality in the United States

Invited lecture, Department of Sociology, Fordham University. New York, NY, February 3, 2020.



Is the Black Mediterranean Crisis the Achilles’ Heel of Liberal Human Rights?

Conference on Critical Perspectives on Human Rights, Division of International Studies at the Center for Worker Education, CCNY, City University of New York (with Lucas Arrimada). New York, NY, March 13-15, 2019.



‘Neither Elites Nor Cosmopolitans’ Effects of the Complexification of Visa Policies since the Nineties in the United States on Highly Skilled Immigrants’ Work Trajectories

Crossing Borders/ Crossing Disciplines: Rethinking Inclusion, Exclusion, and Human Mobility Conference. Oxford University, Oxford, UK, May 18, 2018.



Multi-Step Pathways to Highly Skilled Immigrants’ Legal Permanent Residency in the United States

Session: Immigration and Law, Eastern Sociological Society Annual Meeting. Baltimore, MD, February 23, 2018.



Highly Skilled Immigration in the United States in an Age of Globalization: an Institutional and Agency Approach

PhD Dissertation Defense, Department of Sociology, Graduate Center of the City University of New York. New York, NY. December 1 st , 2017.



Migración y Derechos

Invited lecture (online) Especialización en Derechos Humanos y Estudios Críticos del Derecho, CLACSO. Argentina, April 2017.



Globalization and Complexification of Migration Channels for Highly Skilled Immigration in the United States

Session: International Migration to the United States, American Sociological Association Annual Meeting. Chicago, IL, October 22-26, 2016.