Author ~ Political Analyst ~ Professor ~ Researcher ~Speaker
Ernesto Castañeda is the Director of the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies and the Immigration Lab and Full Professor at American University in Washington, DC. He has published dozens of books and scientific articles. Castañeda’s insights and commentary are frequently featured in public talks, policy discussions, and major media outlets, making him a prominent voice in public debates on immigration and Latino issues. His analyses have appeared in The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, The Hill, CityLab, Bloomberg, AP, Newsweek, Time, The Daily Beast, the BBC, NPR, HuffPost, and in outlets around the world. He is a frequent guest on Noticias Univision, Telemundo, CNN en Español, NTN24, RTVE24, and France24.
Ernesto Castañeda received an MA and PhD in Sociology from Columbia University and a BA in interdisciplinary studies from the University of California, Berkeley. He has been a visiting scholar at the Sorbonne, the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at the New School for Social Research, and the Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society (COMPAS) at the University of Oxford. He is a member of the Transatlantic Policy Institute, the Center on Health, Risk, and Society, the Anti-Racist Research and Policy Center, the Healthcare Lab, and the Metropolitan Policy Center at American University.
Castañeda conducts research on migration, urban issues, health disparities, vulnerable populations, contentious politics and social movements. He compares immigrant integration and ethnic political mobilization in the U.S. and Western Europe. He has conducted surveys and ethnographic fieldwork in the United States, France, Spain, Switzerland, Mexico, Algeria, and Morocco; and published on remittances and development; integration and transnationalism; hometown associations and diaspora organizations; urban exclusion; the border fence; transnational families and the children of migrants left behind; health disparities within immigrant, public housing, and homeless Hispanic populations.
As immigrants settle in new places, they are faced with endless uncertainties that prevent them from feeling that they belong. From language barriers, to differing social norms, to legal boundaries separating them from established residents, immigrants are constantly navigating shifting and contradictory expectations to both assimilate and honor their native culture. In his books and multiple articles and chapters, Ernesto Castañeda describes and theorizes about the parallel processes of immigrant integration and exclusion in global and border cities in the United States and Europe, with special emphasis on Latin America and North Africa as places of origin and cultural referents for immigrants.
He is the author of Immigration Realities: Challenging Common Misperceptions (with Carina Cione, Columbia University Press 2024); Reunited: Family Separation & Central American Migration (with Daniel Jenks, Russell Sage Foundation 2024); Building Walls: The Exclusion of Latin People in the U.S. (Lexington Books 2019), A Place to Call Home: Immigrant Belonging and Exclusion in New York, Paris, and Barcelona (Stanford University Press 2018); and with Charles Tilly and Lesley Wood of Social Movements 1768–2018 (Routledge 2020). He is the editor of Immigration and Categorical Inequality: Migration to the City and the Birth of Race and Ethnicity (Routledge 2018); and co-editor with Cathy L. Schneider of Collective Violence, Contentious Politics, and Social Change: A Charles Tilly Reader (Routledge 2017).
A prolific public scholar, Dr. Castañeda blends rigorous sociological analysis with accessible public engagement to inform policy debates, uplift immigrant voices, and deepen public understanding of migration’s impacts on cities, families, and democracy. He exemplifies the power of research translation for publicly engaged scholarship through his efforts to make his scholarship accessible to Spanish-speaking and non-expert audiences.
As a sociologist, Castañeda helps illustrate the cultural and societal issues around immigration, having the language and first-hand experience to interpret and communicate these topics to people who are seeking to understand migration and change immigration policies and procedures. He explains the culture and motivations of immigrants to increase understanding between newcomers and native-born groups. His work tells a universal story about the relatively small percentage of the world’s population who move abroad.
He invites people to have honest conversations about immigration, expanding it beyond academia to journalists and the general public by communicating research in a way that is more understandable: free of jargon and obscure mathematical models. Interview here.