Rodriguez's research interests are in the areas of globalization, the nation-state and development; labor and international migration; race, diaspora and trans/nationalisms; and gender.

She is currently completing her book manuscript entitled, "Global Workers, Migrant Citizens:  Philippine Labor and the Brokerage State."  With the most well-developed migration apparatus in the world, the Philippines is a vital case-study that allows us to track the future trajectories of global flows of labor, especially since its migration
program is being duplicated by many developing countries around the world. "Global Workers, Migrant Citizens" offers an analysis of the apparatus by which the Philippine state produces, distributes, and regulates gendered and racialized migrant workers becoming the world's premier supplier of contractual, short-term labor.  Moreover, it
examines the different sets of relations, often contradictory and fundamentally gendered, that the state must negotiate, or broker with foreign governments, overseas employers and its citizens to ensure that out-flows of labor and in-flows of remittances go unhampered. "Global Workers, Migrant Citizens" is based on qualitative research
including ethnography, interviews and archival work conducted mainly in the Philippines.  What is novel about Rodriguez's research, however, is that she applied ethnographic methods to a study of the state.  In addition, she worked closely Migrante-International which has played a vital role in some of the largest and most effective transnational mobilizations of Philippine migrant workers in the last decade.

Rodriguez's second major research project examines whether and how New Jersey immigrants' daily lives have been impacted by post-9/11 immigration-related national security laws.


Links to organizations and projects Prof. Rodriguez is actively involved in:

*Institute for Research on Women (Rutgers) http://irw.rutgers.edu/
*Center for Race and Ethnicity (Rutgers) http://raceethnicity.rutgers.edu/
*Collective for Asian American Studies(Rutgers)--no website available
*Columbia University Women and Society Seminar: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/seminars/seminars/society/seminar-folder/women-society.html
*International Sociological Association, Research Committee on Labor Movements (RC44): http://www.socsci.mcmaster.ca/globallabour/rc44/
*Association for Asian American Studies: http://www.aaastudies.org/index.tpl
*SIGNS: Journal of Women and Culture in
Society--http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/Signs/home.html
*Critical Filipino and Filipina Studies Collective: http://cffsc.focusnow.org.