Erik Bernardino
Assistant Professor of History
Associations
History
Latin American and Latinx Studies
About
B.A., UCLA
Ph.D., UC Santa Cruz
I am a historian of the twentieth century United States specializing in Latinx, immigration, and borderlands histories. I am particularly interested in the intersection of immigration policy and labor migrations at the turn of the twentieth century.
I am currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled Labor’s Morality: The Hidden Ties Between Sexual Labor, Agricultural Work, and Justice at the California Borderlands, 1875–1937 (partial manuscript under review with UT Press). Labor’s Morality argues that people have historically moralized labor to create boundaries between “legitimate” workers and “immoral” criminals and how the border made such distinctions visible. Focusing on sex and agricultural workers, I show how as both groups crossed and recrossed the California-Mexico border, they revealed and contested the conflicting definitions of morality and work between the Mexico and the United States.
Publications
“Between the Homing Pigeon and the Vagrant: The Contract Labor System and the Creation of the Immoral Mexican Migrant, 1910-1929” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History 21 no. 4
“How the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands Became Spaces of Crime and Violence” The American Historian (Winter 2025).
Expertise
Current Courses
Winter Semester 2026
Histories of the US-Mexico Border
This course examines the origins and ongoing legacies of the US-Mexico border in order to complicate present-day discourses of the border as a space of crime and violence. Often conceived as a line of demarcation separating Mexico and the United States, people living in the borderlands often undermi…
US Latinx History
This course introduces students to the history of Latinx Americans drawing on the distinct experiences of Puerto Ricans, Chicanxs/Mexicanxs, Dominican Americans, Central Americans, and Cuban Americans. The course underscores international processes (imperialism and immigration) as central forces in …
Senior Thesis
An in-depth independent study of Latin American and Latinx studies. Majors register for LALS 458 in the winter semester. Majors writing an honors thesis register for LALS 457 in the fall semester and LALS 458 in the winter semester.
Short Term 2026
Latina Power! U.S. Latina Labor History
One of the first major labor victories for Mexican Americans came from an unlikely source: young, Latina organizers. This course examines these women, their organizing, and the larger contexts of labor movements and the place of Latina women in the mid-twentieth century. The course focuses on the 1…
Fall Semester 2026
Histories of the US-Mexico Border
This course examines the origins and ongoing legacies of the US-Mexico border in order to complicate present-day discourses of the border as a space of crime and violence. Often conceived as a line of demarcation separating Mexico and the United States, people living in the borderlands often undermi…
Criminalizing Latinidad: Bad Bunny and "Bad Hombres" in Historical Perspective
In 2025, the NFL announced musician Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, better known as Bad Bunny, as that year’s Super Bowl Halftime Performer. A vocal minority criticized Bad Bunny as not an “American” and claimed he was not a US citizen. Earlier that year, the Department of Homeland Security (D…