Robyn Rodriguez

Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez earned her PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley and is currently an Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Davis. Previously, she was on the Sociology faculty at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Rodriguez is an Asian migration expert, approaching it from local, national and transnational perspectives. Her writing has focused on the Philippine labor diaspora. Rodriguez’s first book, Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labor to the World (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), has received many accolades including an honorable mention for best social science book by the Association for Asian American Studies.  However, Rodriguez has a firm grasp of the broader issues migration from, to and within the Asia-Pacific region engenders due to her scholarship and collaborative work.  The key topics her research explores are the political economy and governance of labor migration, on one hand, and the question of rights and citizenship for migrant workers on the other. She is currently editing an anthology tentatively entitled, “21st Century Coolies? Today’s Asian Labor Migration.”