About

Amelia Frank-Vitale is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. She earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Michigan in 2021. Her areas of specialization include migration, border externalization, immigration and asylum law and practice, violence, and survival strategies, with a focus on Honduras, Central America, and Mexico. Her research explores how people manage and make sense of the expanding US border regime in the Americas, connecting regional immigration policies, organized crime, state violence, and im/mobility as survival strategies. Her research trajectory began with a focus on transit migration through Mexico, documenting the dangers faced by Central Americans and their strategies to navigate hostile environments, including caravans and smuggling. Building on this, her doctoral work shifted to Honduras, studying how young people navigate life on the urban margins after deportation. Her current projects include an ethnography of deportation in the era of border externalization, examining the experiences of young Hondurans deported before reaching the US, and a collaborative ethnographic study of immigration court proceedings across the US. She is also developing a digital archive of migrant caravans through oral histories. Frank-Vitale's work contributes to understanding the changing nature of deportation, border regimes, and the creative ways people challenge mobility controls.

Awards & honors

• 2020 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship
• 2017 Social Science Research Council International Dissertat…
• 2017 Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant
• 2017 Inter-American Foundation Grassroots Development Field…
• 2017 Fulbright U.S. Student Award

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