Rhacel Parreñas

Rhacel Salazar Parreñas is a leading scholar in Social Science, holding the position of Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at the University of Southern California's Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. She earned her Ph.D. in Comparative Ethnic Studies with a designated emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality from the University of California, Berkeley in 1994, along with an M.A. in Comparative Ethnic Studies in 1992 and a B.A. in Peace and Conflict Studies. Prior to USC, she taught at Brown University, University of California, Davis, and University of Wisconsin-Madison. At USC, Parreñas served as Chair of the Department of Sociology from 2012 to 2015 and again from 2022 to 2023. Her academic career reflects a commitment to advancing knowledge on global labor dynamics through rigorous ethnographic research conducted in countries including Denmark, Italy, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates.

Parreñas' research focuses on labor, gender, international migration, human trafficking, the family, and economic sociology, particularly the experiences of Filipina migrant workers in domestic work and other intimate industries. She has authored five monographs, including Servants of Globalization: Migration and Domestic Work (Stanford University Press, 2001; second edition, 2015), Children of Global Migration: Transnational Families and Gendered Woes (2005), The Force of Domesticity: Filipina Migrants and Globalization (2008), Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration, and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo (2011), and Unfree: Migrant Domestic Work in Arab States (2021). She has co-edited three anthologies and published numerous peer-reviewed articles, with her writings translated into multiple languages. Parreñas has received prestigious awards such as the 2023 American Sociological Association Distinguished Scholarly Book Award for Unfree, the 2022 Louis Wirth Best Article Award, the 2019 Jessie Bernard Award, and the 2020 Feminist Mentor Award from Sociologists for Women in Society. Her work has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, Fulbright, and Rockefeller Foundation, and she has held fellowships at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Parreñas contributes to public sociology through consultations with Human Rights Watch and the International Labour Organization, keynote lectures worldwide, and United Nations presentations. She co-edits the Stanford University Press series on Globalization in Everyday Life.

Professional Email: parrenas@usc.edu