Roger Waldinger

Roger Waldinger is a distinguished professor of sociology at UCLA and an expert on international migration to the United States. In his research, Waldinger has studied the social, political and economic consequences of international migration as well as the policies and politics emerging in response to its advent; the links between immigrants in the United States and the countries and people they have left behind.

Waldinger, who is director of the UCLA Center for the Study of International Migration, has studied second-generation immigrants. In his book, “The Cross-Border Connection,” Waldinger explores what he terms a paradox at the core of the migratory phenomenon: emigrants departing one society become immigrants in another, tying those two societies together. Waldinger explains how interconnections between place of origin and destination are built and maintained and why they eventually fall apart.