Tania Lopez DoCarmo

As a sociologist and sociolegal scholar, my research examines how law shapes social inequality, with a focus on migration and human trafficking. I study how social problems are defined and governed, and how these definitions take hold in legal systems and institutions. My work is particularly concerned with forms of legal, structural, and symbolic violence, and how they shape the lives of marginalized populations.

My current book, under contract with Stanford University Press, traces the global rise of counter-human trafficking policy through the United Nations and examines how these frameworks operate in practice. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research in Cambodia, the project highlights how institutionalized narratives and logics can produce harmful consequences for marginalized groups, even when they are intended to protect them.

I am developing new research that examines access to justice in criminal, juvenile and human rights oriented courts handling human trafficking cases, with particular attention to how legal processes and institutional dynamics shape outcomes for survivors. In addition, I am conducting collaborative research with Carolina Bank Muñoz and Lynette Arnold on the experiences of immigrant origin students navigating higher education in the United States. I am co-writing an article with a former undergraduate honors student, Abby Dawiczyk, on the legal architecture of labor exploitation among domestic migrant workers in Singapore, and I am completing a co-authored study of immigrant detention with Rocio Rosales. I have also previously collaborated on research examining the use of storytelling in mobilizing social movements, and how legal decision-making is shaped through artificial intelligence, machine learning, and blockchain technologies.

I teach courses on globalization, law and inequality, crimmigration, human trafficking, and criminology. Before entering academia, I spent over a decade working with international advocacy and nongovernmental organizations in Brazil, Cambodia, and the United States on issues including migration, labor exploitation, human trafficking, and child protection. I hold a Bachelors degree in Social Science and Gender Studies from Washington State University, a Masters degree in Anthropology from the University of North Texas, and a Masters and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Irvine.