Lise Nelson

My research agenda examines labor, identity, and belonging in the context of neoliberal globalization. Of particular interest are the ways globalization impacts, and is contested by, less powerful groups whose experiences and opportunities are shaped by gender, race, class, and/or illegality (effects of ‘real’ or perceived legal status). My Mexico-based research examined neoliberal restructuring and struggles over gender, indigeneity and political authority in Michoacán. More recently I turned to the economics and politics of Latinx immigration in the United States. This line of inquiry includes research exploring struggles over farmworker housing in Woodburn, Oregon as well as NSF-funded research on gentrification, immigrant labor regimes and geographies of social reproduction in the rural U.S. I am committed to fine-grained, historically situated qualitative analysis that links processes of everyday life and ‘local’ change with global transformations and power dynamics.