Sociology Faculty

Summary of Expertise

My areas of expertise span immigration, social inequalities (poverty, income inequality, housing instability, segregation), and public policy (esp. access to health and human services). I employ social demographic, statistical, and geographic information systems methods and tools. I analyze administrative, Census, survey, and qualitative data to answer research questions about our social world. Before graduate school, I worked as a research associate at the Urban Institute in Washington, DC to examine immigration policy, criminal justice, low-income working families, and workforce and youth development. 

Research Interests

I am particularly interested in the role local contexts play in creating and cementing divergent outcomes in immigrant communities. In my dissertation research, I extend my interests in how places accentuate existing inequalities. In my recent work, I have examined (1) the role of local demographic factors as determinants of deportation contexts; (2) whether variation in local deportation regimes sharpened existing inequalities via differential rates of housing instability; and (3) why certain places prove most well-equipped to identify crimes targeting immigrants in need of legal services. My ongoing research examines persistent sources of inequality across the US: poverty and income inequality, access to the safety net, health, education, housing, crime reporting, and language segregation. I am especially interested in organizational and policy efforts that can mitigate inequalities in people's lives.

Biography, Education and Training

I'm an Assistant Professor of sociology at UCSC where I study the changing landscape of immigration in the United States. Over the past decade, I have examined the vast inequalities of immigrants' access to justice, the social safety net, poverty, and segregation. My research examines how and where deportation and enforcement initiatives exacerbate these inequalities and leave imprints in our local communities. During 2020-2021, I am an Emerging Poverty Scholars Fellow with the Institute for Research on Poverty (University of Wisconsin-Madison, funded by The JPB Foundation).

I completed my sociology Ph.D. in 2018 from Stanford University, where I was a Fellow at Stanford's Center for Poverty and Inequality and Graduate Research Fellow at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CSRE). Prior to graduate school, I received my BA at DePauw University (History; Conflict Studies) and an MPA at Indiana University, Bloomington-SPEA (policy analysis; economic development). I grew up in Guanajuato, México and Chicago, IL; and I live in Santa Cruz with my wife, Natasha, and our sons.

Honors, Awards and Grants

• Emerging Poverty Scholars Fellow, University of Wisconsin-Madison (Institute for Research on Poverty) & The JPB Foundation (2020-2021)
• Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellow (2017-2018)
• Academic Achievement Award, Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education, Stanford University (2018)
• Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellow (2014-2017)
• Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity Graduate Fellowship (2012-2015)

Selected Publications

• 2019 Perreira, Krista M., and Juan M. Pedroza. "Policies of Exclusion: Implications for the Health of Immigrants and Their Children." Annual Review of Public Health. open access
• 2018 Pedroza, Juan Manuel. "Deportation Discretion: Minority Threat and'Secure Communities' Deportations." Policy Studies Journal.
• 2018 Mattingly, M. J., and Pedroza, J. M. “Convergence and Disadvantage in Poverty Trends (1980–2010): What is Driving the Relative Socioeconomic Position of Hispanics and Whites?” Race and Social Problems 10(1):53-66.
• 2018 Jiménez, Tomás, Julie Park, and Juan M. Pedroza. "The New Third Generation: Post‐1965 Immigration and the Next Chapter in the Long Story of Assimilation." International Migration Review 52, no. 4 (2018): 1040-1079.
• 2013 Pedroza, Juan M. “Removal Roulette: Secure Communities and Immigration Enforcement in the United States (2008-2012).” Book chapter in Outside Justice, Springer.
• 2010 Chaudry, Ajay, Randy Capps, Juan M. Pedroza, Rosa M. Castañeda, Rob Santos, and Molly Scott. “Facing Our Future: Children in the Aftermath of Immigration Detention.” The Urban Institute. open access

Selected Presentations

• Population Association of America (panel: 2013-2019; poster: 2016, 2017, 2019; chair: 2013, 2016; organizer: 2020, 2021; discussant: 2019, 2020)
  • Poster Award Winner, 2017
• Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management (panel: 2011, 2017, 2019, 2020; discussant: 2019; program committee: 2019, 2020)
  • Get to know the APPAM program committee: Juan M. Pedroza
• Law and Society Association (panel: 2014, 2016, 2018, 2019)
• American Sociological Association (panel: 2019; discussant: 2019; roundtable: 2014)

Selected Recordings

Juan Pedroza's Fall 2020 Welcome

Teaching Interests

My teaching interests include quantitative methods (undergraduate and graduate), immigration to the United States, Latine/x/a/o identities, and topics related to social inequalities and public policy.