Jason De León

About

Jason De León is a UCLA anthropology professor and MacArthur fellow whose work focuses on undocumented migration and human smuggling along the U.S.-Mexico border. He has conducted extensive ethnographic research, embedding himself with migrant guides, or 'coyotes,' over several years to study the people behind the industry of human smuggling. His research seeks to dispel stereotypes about those involved in moving migrants across Mexico and offers a rare inside look at the complex realities of human smuggling. De León's work highlights the human faces behind migration and provides a nuanced understanding of the social and economic forces shaping this phenomenon. His book, Soldiers and Kings, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2024, is based on seven years of research and firsthand experiences lived amidst smugglers. The book has been widely acclaimed for its vivid and compassionate portrayal of the lives of smugglers and migrants, offering a harrowing and illuminating account that challenges common perceptions and contributes significantly to discussions on immigration policy and reform.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Geography
• Sociology
• Law
• Cartography
• Economics
• Surgery
• Medicine
• Demography
• Natural resource economics

Selected publications

• The Land of Open Graves

  2019-04-03 · 542 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  In his gripping and provocative debut, anthropologist Jason De León sheds light on one of the most pressing political issues of our time—the human consequences of US immigration policy. The Land of Open Graves reveals the suffering and deaths that occur daily in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona as thousands of undocumented migrants attempt to cross the border from Mexico into the United States. Drawing on the four major fields of anthropology, De León uses an innovative combination of ethnography,…

  PublisherDOI

• Scales of Suffering in the US-Mexico Borderlands

  International Journal of Historical Archaeology · 2020 · 23 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Indecisive Moment

  2018-06-14 · 15 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Counter-infrastructure in the US–Mexico borderlands: some archaeological perspectives

  World Archaeology · 2021-05-27 · 6 citations

  articleSenior author

  Massive infrastructures of transportation and border security, designed to control flows of people and things, dominate the contemporary US–Mexico border. Together, these material projects work to inscribe the hegemonic processes of neoliberal capitalism and national sovereignty onto the physical landscape and into everyday life, giving them an aura of inevitability and permanence. Using archaeology, we challenge this narrative by exploring the counter-infrastructures developed by marginal commu…

  PublisherDOI

• Calling Self-Indulgence

  TSQ Transgender Studies Quarterly · 2019-11-01 · 4 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Recent works by trans and nonbinary poets, including Oliver Baez Bendorf, Jos Charles, jayy dodd, Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, Paige Lewis, and Danez Smith, gesture to a new mode of trans-confessional poetry. Trans poets practice naming as a form of self-indulgence, and trans names and pronouns are a form of poetry—following Audre Lorde's articulation—read into the world to give it new shape. In trans naming practices and poetry, self-indulgences are also demands made of another, a new nam…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Catherine Besteman

  82 shared

• Robert Borofsky

  University of California System

  82 shared

• Laurence Ralph

  82 shared

• Philippe Bourgois

  University of California, Los Angeles

  82 shared

• Mara Buchbinder

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  81 shared

• Paul Farmer

  Falmouth University

  81 shared

• Cameron Gokee

  Appalachian State University

  11 shared

• Jess Beck

  7 shared

Similar researchers at University of California, Los Angeles

• Elinor Ochsh-63
• P. Jeffrey Brantinghamh-59