A graduate of UC Berkeley, Rafael Alarcon is a senior professor at the research institute at Tijuana, Mexico, the Colegio de la Frontera Norte. He has published numerous articles and books, including, most recently, Making Los Angeles Home: The Integration of Mexican Immigrants in the United States. He coauthored the classic work on Mexican immigrants in the Bay Area, Return to Aztlan: The Social Processes of Migration from Western Mexico. He has been a visiting professor at UC San Diego, UCLA, University of Valencia, University of Paris, and Columbia University, where he is at present a visiting research fellow. He is currently conducting research on deported immigrants and their families, which will inform this lecture.