Julio Orellana is Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies at Scripps College. He was a 2023-2025 University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Orellana is an interdisciplinary social-science scholar whose primary areas of research are Latino Studies, Latin American Studies, Central American Studies, Migration Studies, and Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies. Dr. Julio Orellana’s research examines the political economy of forced international migration from Guatemala and migrant politics in the Greater Los Angeles region. His book in progress, The Normalization of Forced Guatemalan Migration: Race and Labor Under Contemporary Capitalism, examines the rise of indigenous (Maya) and non-indigenous (ladino/mestizo) Guatemalan migrants in Southern California and the social conditions that have generated their civil society organizations. He collaborates with local and transnational Guatemalan grassroots associations. His recent publication, Racialized Guatemalan Migrant Labor and Grassroots Civil Societies in the Greater Los Angeles Region, was published in the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics (JREP) with Cambridge University Press. Dr. Orellana’s work has also appeared in the London School of Economics and Political Science’s USAPP website.
Julio earned his Ph.D. in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside where he cofounded the first-ever Mesoamerican Theory and Praxis Working Group. The goal of the working group is to bring attention and action to campus and the wider community of the most pressing issues impacting the Guatemalan and the broader Central American diaspora in Southern California. Julio was a founding board member of UC Riverside’s Latino and Latin American Studies Research Center and is an affiliate of UC Santa Barbara’s Global Latinidades Center, The Central American Studies Lab, and The Orfalea Center Initiative on Global Migration and Inequality. Julio’s scholarship has been recognized by numerous prestigious awards including the Ford Foundation Dissertation Year Fellowship (declined), the Haynes Lindley Foundation Dissertation Year Fellowship, and the New York University Faculty First-Look Program.
Julio is the proud son of Guatemalan migrants. His familial roots are found in Guatemala City and Chiquimula. He was born and raised in a working-class neighborhood in Mid City Los Angeles and attended public schools from elementary through his doctoral studies. He is a first-generation college student, a product of the California State University’s Educational Opportunity Program (EOP), and a Sally-Casanova Predoctoral Scholar.
Prior to pursuing graduate studies full time, Julio worked as a teacher at the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and as a youth advocate for over ten years. During this time, he worked with and mentored working-class students of color primarily in South Central, Downtown, and East Los Angeles. All of Julio’s career choices and future endeavors are guided by the lessons he learned as an Ethnic Studies major at Cal Poly Humboldt where he began his educational journey. During his free time, Julio is a recreational distance runner.