Daniel E. Martínez

Dr. Martínez is a Distinguished Scholar & Associate Professor in the School of Sociology and serves as a core faculty member in the Mexican American Studies Department. His research and teaching interests include race and ethnicity, undocumented immigration, and criminology. He is particularly interested in the social and legal criminalization of immigration.

Dr. Martínez has also conducted extensive research on deportation and undocumented border crosser deaths along the US-Mexico border. He is a principal investigator of the Migrant Border Crossing Study, a Ford Foundation-funded research project that examines recently deported undocumented migrants' experiences crossing the US-Mexico border and residing in the United States. He edited In the Shadow of the Wall: Violence and Migration on the U.S. Mexico Border, which was released in 2018 by the University of Arizona Press. Dr. Martínez began conducting immigration-related research as a BMI graduate student affiliate more than 15 years ago.

His current research focuses on 1) Latino/a panethnicity, 2) the relationship between so-called “sanctuary” policies and public safety, 3) migrant deaths, and 4) the ecological correlates of officer-involved shootings and violent crime in southwestern cities.

Dr. Martínez is an affiliate of the School of Geography, Development, & Environment, the Center for Latin American Studies, the School of Government and Public Policy, and the SBS Human Rights Practice Program. He currently serves on the editorial boards of the American Sociological Review and the Journal on Migration and Human Security.