Aaron Ponce is an Assistant Professor in the Department of International Studies at Indiana University. He earned his PhD in sociology at Indiana University. He also holds a JD from the University of Wisconsin Law School and an MA in linguistics from the University of Texas.

Aaron's research draws on the sociology of immigration and global migration, political sociology, and race and ethnicity. His work investigates how overlapping symbolic boundaries (race, language, gender, religion) constitute citizenship and national ways of belonging in immigrant-receiving societies. Much of his recent work focuses on immigration to Europe, and on the reception and perception of immigrant populations, including Muslim immigrants. More recent work compares the Muslim experience in Europe and the U.S., and examines Muslim Americans' and other immigrant-background groups' status in a historically racialized landscape.

Among the questions that his research has worked to answer are: Do more accommodating modes of belonging increase migration? How do racial hierarchies define which groups are perceived as assimilable or desirable? How do seemingly discrete social categories (language, religion, gender) become racialized in processes of group boundary making? Findings from his research speak to the contradictions inherent in immigration regimes, immigrant reception processes, and the norms that define and reinforce liberal democracies.

Read more about his research here.