Steve McKay

Biographical Information
Steve McKay is Professor of Sociology and Director of the UCSC Center for Labor and Community.  His research has focused on labor, gender, migration, racial formation, and globalization.  He is currently working on a book, based on historical and multi-sited ethnographic research, focused on the rise and reproduction of ethno-national labor niches in contemporary global labor markets.  The book, focused on global shipping, is entitled Born to Sail? Race, Masculinity and the Making of Filipino Seafarers.  Steve is also working locally in the Santa Cruz area on a series of community-initiated student-engaged research (CISER) projects: Watsonville is in the Heart – a community archive and research project; We Belong – Collaboration for Community-Engaged Research and Immigrant Justice; Working for Dignity – the Santa Cruz Low-Wage Worker Study; and No Place Like Home – The Affordable Housing Crisis Study.

Research Interests
Labor and labor markets, political sociology, globalization and social change, migration and racial formation, Southeast Asia, community-engaged research.

Previous Education/Training
2001 – Ph.D. Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison

1996 – M.A. Southeast Asian Studies with Distinction, University of Wisconsin-Madison

1989 – B.A. Political Economy of Industrial Societies with Honors, University of California-Berkeley