Authored Books

South Central Dreams: Finding Home and Building Community in South L.A. (co-authored with Manuel Pastor). NYU Press, 2021.

…an important commentary on identity and civic engagement with implications for not only Los Angeles, but the rest of the country.
—Congresswoman Karen Bass

…a new paradigm for how to think about race, place, and identity.
—Natalia Molina

…offers a model for how community studies should be done, hopefully one that will be emulated in other cities throughout the nation.
—Douglas Massey

Paradise Transplanted: Migration and the Making of California Gardens. University of California Press, 2014.

Offers us an entirely new way of understanding, quite literally, the landscape of immigration…It will forever change how you ‘see’ Los Angeles.
—Laura Pulido

In humanizing nature through their gardening, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo reveals how immigrants have created communities of meaning, hierarchies of pleasure and power, and landscapes of beauty…Public sociology at its best.
—Michael Burawoy

Tells us a story that is not only simply about gardens but also about power relations, cultural and environmental sustainability, and social justice.
—Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris

Domestica: Trabajadoras Inmigrantes a Cargo de la Limpieza y el Cuidado a la Sombra de la Abundancia. Mexico, DF: Editorial Porrua y Instituto Nacional de Migracion. Miguel Angel Porrúa, 2011.

God’s Heart Has No Borders: Religious Activism for Immigrant Rights. University of California Press, 2008.

This timely and humane book redirects our attention from headlines … to the quiet and unswerving work of persons of faith who promote understanding and compassion.
—Cecilia Menjivar

A much-needed corrective to our often skewed understanding of the role of religion in public life.
—Peggy Levitt

God’s Heart Has No Borders makes vital contributions to current policy and scholarly debates about immigration.
—Manuel A. Vásquez

Domestica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence. University of California Press, 2001. (New edition, with new preface “The Domestic Goes Global,” in 2007).

Masterly, evenhanded, and rooted in the high-minded ambitions of its author.
—Atlantic Monthly

A thoughtful, nuanced account of a troubled world so close to home that it’s become almost invisible.
—Mother Jones

Domestica…opens a rare window into the lives of workers.
—Los Angeles Times

Gendered Transitions: Mexican Experiences of Immigration. University of California Press, 1994.

A path-breaking book combining the study of gender with immigration…offers rich insights into the complexities of women’s settlement experiences and marks a new era in immigration studies.
—Maxine Baca Zinn

This book makes its own clear contribution…to the much broader field of migration theory.
—Ronald Skeldon

Combines a thorough understanding of theoretical issues with some of the most engaging ethnographic syntheses I have read in recent times.
—Maria Patricia Fernandez-Kelly

Edited Books

Gender Through the Prism of Difference (with Zinn, M. B. and Messner, M. A.) (Ed.). Oxford University Press, 2010.

Examines gender by focusing on how a range of social inequalities and identities impact gender…has a balance of readings that focus on the U.S., those that focus on transnational issues (such as migration) and those that focus on non-U.S. contexts.
—Janice McCabe

Nation and Migration (with Gutierrez, D.) (Eds.). Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.

…the latest cutting-edge research and thinking about borders, nations, and globalization from a transnational American studies perspective.
—The Western Historical Quarterly

Religion and Social Justice for Immigrants. Rutgers University Press, 2007.

…captures the fascinating diversity of faith-based resistance around U.S. Immigration issues.
—Sharon Erickson Nepstad

Gender and U.S. Immigration: Contemporary Trends. (Ed.) University of California Press, 2003.

A collection of some of the best new works on a range of issues pertaining to gender as shaping and being shaped by contemporary U.S. Immigration.
—Gender, Work and Organization

Challenging Fronteras: Structuring Latina and Latino Lives in the U.S. (with Romero, M. and Ortiz, V.) (Ed.). Routledge, 1997.

Challenges the Black/White approach to the study of ethnicity and identity in the United States while correcting stereotypes and providing accurate, in-depth information about U.S. Latino groups.
—Transformations