Her areas of specialization include immigration, transnationalism, and borderlands; gender and women’s studies; childhood and family; and Mexico and the U.S. West. She is the author of Intimate Migrations: Gender, Family, and Illegality among Transnational Mexicans (New York University Press, 2012) and co-editor of Everyday Ruptures: Children, Youth, and Migration in Global Perspective (Vanderbilt University Press, 2011). She has worked with Mexican migrants in both Mexico and the United States, and also studies the Burning Man community in Black Rock City, Nevada and beyond.