Els de Graauw

Els de Graauw is Professor of Political Science, Public Policy, and International Migration Studies at Baruch College and the Graduate Center, both part of the City University of New York (CUNY). She is affiliated with the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College and serves as an affiliate faculty member in Black and Latino Studies. Her academic work focuses on immigration policy, urban politics, and the role of civil society organizations in immigrant integration.

Dr. de Graauw's research examines how governmental and nongovernmental organizations build institutional capacity for immigrant integration and representation. Her key areas of expertise include American politics, immigration and immigrant integration, urban politics and policy, civil society organizations and social movements, and government bureaucracy. She employs qualitative research methods to investigate these complex social phenomena.

Her scholarly output includes the award-winning book Making Immigrant Rights Real: Nonprofits and the Politics of Integration in San Francisco (Cornell University Press, 2016), Advancing Immigrant Rights in Houston (Temple University Press, 2024), and Migrants, Minorities, and the Media: Information, Representations, and Participation in the Public Sphere (Routledge, 2017) which she co-edited. She is currently working on her fourth book, Grassroots Bureaucracy: How Cities and States Integrate Immigrants, and collaborating on an edited volume titled Handbook on Cities and Migration.

Her research appears in numerous prestigious journals including UC Law Journal, Law & Policy, Social Problems, Territory, Politics, Governance, and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. Her work has been supported by major funding organizations such as the National Science Foundation, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Dr. de Graauw co-founded the Section on Migration and Citizenship of the American Political Science Association in 2012 and served as its elected co-president and secretary from 2012-2016. She has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (2014-2024) and the Urban Affairs Review (2016-2023), and currently serves on the International Advisory Council of Metropolis International. She regularly teaches courses on immigration, social movements, and U.S. politics, and advises students on honors theses, MA capstone projects, and PhD dissertations.