Tomás R. Jiménez

“I’m the son of a formerly undocumented immigrant; my dad was a migrant farm worker who made it out of a set of circumstances that most people don’t. Growing up, I observed that some people ‘make it’ in a conventional sense and some don’t—and that is related to their racial and ethnic background, their legal status, and the country they’re born into. These characteristics shape opportunities in ways that I felt as a child and still feel today are deeply unjust. It’s exciting to be part of a university-wide effort that could change the way people think about race and ethnicity and the way policies are developed and implemented to allow people to flourish and thrive.”

Tomás Jiménez is a professor of Sociology and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity whose research and writing focuses on immigration, policy, immigrant integration, social mobility, and ethnic and racial identity. He is the author of three books: States of Belonging: Immigration Policies, Attitudes, and Inclusion; The Other Side of Assimilation: How Immigrants are Changing American Life; and Replenished Ethnicity: Mexican Americans, Immigration, and Identity. 

Beyond campus, Jiménez has been an Irvine Fellow at the New America Foundation and an American Sociological Association Congressional Fellow for the Office of U.S. Rep. Michael Honda, where he served as a legislative aide focusing on immigration, veterans’ affairs, housing, and election reform. Jiménez has led the Latino Leadership Alliance’s Stanford Summer Program since 2015. 

Jiménez involvement with the formation of a race institute at Stanford dates back to 2020, when he was appointed to serve on the Framework Task Force to Recommend New Infrastructure for the Study of Race and the Impact of Race on Society. Jiménez and Brian Lowery later co-chaired the Race Institute Implementation Committee, and were subsequently named the institute’s founding faculty co-directors.

Professor Jiménez’s full biography is available on the Sociology Department website.