Oscar Cornejo Casares

As a sociologist, I research how legal status and its racial intersections shape the social lives of undocumented immigrants from womb to tomb. Relying on qualitative methods, I analyze the construction, consequences, and reproduction of inequality, state power, and immigration law. 

My current book project focuses on the long-term effects of migrant illegality and the embodied forms of legal violence. My lived experiences, like being an immigrant or a first-generation college student, inform my scholarship and teaching.

As a professor, I aim to foster classrooms where students interrogate the social order, connect their own biography to histories and structures, and further new futures and societies. At Davidson, I will teach courses at the intersection of Sociology and Latinx Studies. 

I am a scholar-activist and a filmmaker committed to accessible forms of knowledge production. I co-produced the 2019 documentary, “Change the Subject,” which chronicles the history and political efforts to replace the subject heading “illegal aliens” from the Library of Congress. The sequel is currently in pre-development. 

My other work has appeared in local and national media, like the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times. My research has been funded by the Social Science Research Council, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the American Bar Foundation. 

Before coming to Davidson, I earned my B.A. in Sociology and Native American Studies modified with Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies from Dartmouth College and my M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University.