Joanna Dreby

Associate Professor
College of Arts and Sciences
Department: Sociology

Expertise:
Immigration; families; children

Campus phone: (518) 956-8150
Campus email: [email protected]

Biography:
Joanna Dreby’s research primarily focuses on family dynamics under conditions of increased globalization, with specific expertise in research with Mexican migrants and with children.

She is author of the award-winning books Divided by Borders: Mexican Migrants and their Children (University of California Press 2010) and Everyday Illegal: When Policies Undermine Immigrant Families (University of California Press 2015), and the award-winning article "The Burden of Deportation on Children in Mexican Immigrant Families" (Journal of Marriage and Family 2012). She is co-editor of the volume Family and Work in Everyday Ethnography (Temple University Press 2013). Professor Dreby has published more than 25 peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters on a range of topics of interest to the media including child care fatalities, transnational families, gender and generational relations in families, work-family balance, and the impacts of immigration enforcement policies on children.

Professor Dreby was a Fulbright Scholar to Costa Rica in 2017 and received a Fulbright-Garcia Robles Grant in 2004-2005 for field research in Mexico. Her research with children has been funded by the Foundation for Child Development (2009-2012). Professor Dreby’s work includes a variety of qualitative methods, emphasizing ethnography, comparative research and in-depth interview techniques.

Professor Dreby comes to academia with a background in social services and retains interest in community-based work. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the CUNY Graduate Center in 2007.