This spring I became an Assistant Professor at Baruch College in the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs. My research interests are in the areas of race and ethnicity, immigration, and crimmigration (criminalization of immigration policy and procedure) aka La Polimigra. My recent book Behind Crimmigration: ICE, Law Enforcement, and Resistance in America highlights how federal immigration enforcement programs are implemented through local law enforcement in the new immigrant destination of North Carolina. I am originally from Western, North Carolina and completed my undergraduate, Master’s Degree, and PhD in Sociology at Duke University. I consider myself a public-sociologist and hope that my scholarship and community work will contribute to more fruitful discussions around crimmigration/polimigra policies.  I’m especially interested in how these policies and procedures relate to issues of criminal justice accountability, transparency, reform and abolition.

I’ve spent the last few years working/volunteering with the NC Immigrant Rights Alliance and the NC Black Leadership and Organizing Collective.

For the 2021-2022 academic year, I was a Visiting Research Scholar at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs teaching Race, Power, & Inequality and Race & Public Policy. I was a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Sociology in the criminology concentration at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC from 2018-2022.

You can find more about my work with The Latino Migration Project, about my work/thoughts on diversity in higher education, and about my family through the links included.

Email: felicia.arriaga@baruch.cuny.edu