Rate My Professor Phil Martin

Phil Martin is Professor Emeritus of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Davis. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1975. Martin's research focuses on immigration, farm labor, and economic development. He chairs the University of California’s Comparative Immigration and Integration Program, edits the monthly Migration News, and edits the quarterly Rural Migration News. Throughout his career at UC Davis since 1975, he has taught courses such as Agricultural Labor (ARE 150) and Intermediate Microeconomics.

Martin held key appointments including the only academic on the Commission on Agricultural Workers assessing the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act's effects. He was a member of the Binational Study of Migration (1995-1997) and conducted assessments for Turkish migration to the European Union (1987-1990), immigration's impact on Malaysia’s economy (1994-1995), and unauthorized migration strategies for Thailand (2001-2002). He received UC Davis’s Distinguished Public Service Award in 1994. Martin has authored influential books including Merchants of Labor: Recruiters and International Labor Migration (Oxford University Press, 2017), Promise Unfulfilled: Unions, Immigration, and the Farm Workers (Cornell University Press, 2003), and Importing Poverty? Immigration and the Changing Face of Rural America (Yale University Press, 2009). Key publications encompass Immigration and Farm Labor: Policy Options and Consequences (American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2013), The Prosperity Paradox: Fewer and More Vulnerable Farm Workers (2021), and Covid and US Farm Labor (2023). A frequent expert commentator in The New York Times, The Economist, and other media, Martin provides practical policy solutions to complex migration and labor issues, and consults for UN agencies worldwide.