The award honors ASA members’ outstanding contributions to sociological practice, and it recognizes work that has facilitated, or served as a model for, the work of others in sociology or outside the discipline.

Fernández-Kelly, a social anthropologist with an interest in international economic development, gender, class and ethnicity, and urban ethnography, is a research associate at the Office of Population Research. She also is Director of the Center for Migration and Development.

As part of her dissertation research in the late 1970s, Fernández-Kelly conducted a groundbreaking ethnography focusing on export-processing zones in Asia and Latin America. She is the author or co-author of 13 books, and she has written extensively on migration, economic restructuring, women in the labor force, and race and ethnicity.

With Lorraine Gray, Fernández-Kelly co-produced the 1986 Emmy-award winning documentary “The Global Assembly Line.” 

She will be recognized by the ASA on Aug. 9 at the association’s annual meeting in San Francisco.