anthropologist, geographer, social theorist, social critic
Nicholas De Genova
Houston, 2023
Nicholas De Genova is a scholar of migration, borders, race, citizenship, and labor. During the 2024-25 academic year, he was a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.
He holds an appointment as Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Comparative Studies (formerly, Comparative Cultural Studies) at the University of Houston, where he served as Chair of the department (2018-24). He previously held teaching appointments in urban and political geography at King's College London, and in sociocultural anthropology at Stanford, Columbia, and Goldsmiths, University of London, as well as visiting professorships or research positions at the Universities of Warwick, Bern, and Amsterdam.
He received his Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Chicago.
Professor De Genova is among the initiating signatories of the Call for
The Migration Scholars Global Solidarity and Resistance Network
NEW Books
co-edited with Daniel I. Morales
Duke University Press (2026)
Read the Editors' Preface and Introduction HERE
Available for Purchase Now
30% DISCOUNT on of the paperback edition,
with code: E26BRDR
Order HERE
Migration, Control, and Resistance
across Latin America and the Caribbean
co-edited with Soledad Álvarez Velasco, Gustavo Dias, and Eduardo Domenech
Duke University Press (2026)
Read the Editors' Introduction HERE
Available for Purchase Now
30% DISCOUNT on of the paperback edition,
with code: E26BRDRS
Order HERE
RECENT
Articles / Chapters / Interviews:
“We Are All ‘Illegal’ Now: Border Despotism, Authoritarianism, Civil War”
Portolan — online companion to SAQ: South Atlantic Quarterly (Published online: November 14, 2025)
“Migrant ‘Illegality’ and Disappearance in the US: An Interview with Nicholas De Genova”
Mapping Absence (conducted November-December 2025; published online: April 20, 2026)
Dialogue I: “(Enforced) Disappearance in the US from a Global Perspective”
*In Spanish: “La ‘ilegalidad’ de los migrantes y la desaparición en los Estados Unidos: una entrevista con Nicholas De Genova”
“From Border War to Civil War:
The Despotism of the Border and Full-Spectrum Authoritarianism”
Citizenship Studies Volume 29, Number 3-4 (published online: May 15, 2025)
* In Spanish: “Guerra fronteriza como catalizador de guerra civil: instrumentalización del despotismo de frontera para avanzar un autoritarismo de amplio espectro en Estado Unidos” PÉRIPLOS. Revista de Investigación sobre Migraciones / Revista de Pesquisa em Migrações Volume 10, Number 01 (Published online: August 7, 2026) (Brasilia, Brazil)
Theory & Event Volume 29, Number 1 (January 2026)
“Introduction: Border Abolitionism: Migrant Struggles, the Law, and Remaking the World”
Co-Author, with Daniel I. Morales
in Nicholas De Genova and Daniel Morales, eds. Toward Border Abolition: Migrant Struggles and the Law (Duke University Press, 2026)
“Introduction: The Borders of (Our) America”
Co-Author, with Soledad Álvarez Velasco, Eduardo Domenech, and Gustavo Dias
in Soledad Álvarez Velasco, Nicholas De Genova, Gustavo Dias, and Eduardo Domenech, eds. The Borders of America: Migration, Control, and Resistance across Latin America and the Caribbean (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2026)
“The Trans-American Border Regime: Toward a Genealogy”
Co-Author, with Soledad Álvarez Velasco, Eduardo Domenech, and Gustavo Dias
in Soledad Álvarez Velasco, Nicholas De Genova, Gustavo Dias, and Eduardo Domenech, eds. The Borders of America: Migration, Control, and Resistance across Latin America and the Caribbean (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2026)
Podcast: “Nicholas De Genova on the production of illegality and the revolving doors of asylum, in conversation with Soledad Álvarez Velasco, interviewed by Maggie Perzyna; Borders & Belonging (Season 4, Episode 5), hosted by the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration (CERC Migration), led by Anna Triandafyllidou, Toronto Metropolitan University (recorded 29 October 2025; posted online: 13 January 2026)
“The Blackness of Labor, the Blackness of Migration”
in Michaeline A. Crichlow and Patricia Northover, eds.
Decoloniality in the Break of Global Blackness (New York: Routledge, 2025)
“Postcoloniality, Race, and the Ruse of Asylum: An Interview with Nicholas De Genova”
(conducted by Ananya Roy and Veronika Zablotsky)
in Ananya Roy and Veronika Zablotsky with Leisy Abrego, Gaye Theresa Johnson and Maite Zubiaurre, eds.
Beyond Sanctuary: The Humanism of a World in Motion (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2025)
“Free Speech, Academic Freedom, and the Vocation of the Intellectual”
PARISS: Political Anthropological Research on International Social Sciences, (2024) Number 5
Special Forum: PARISS Collective, “Biographical Reflections On Academic Freedom—Part One”; pp. 15-18
“A Racial Theory of Labour: Racial Capitalism from Colonial Slavery to Postcolonial Migration”
Historical Materialism Volume 31, Number 3 (First published online: 31 May 2023)
Special thematic issue: “Race and Capital”
“Border Abolitionism: Analytics/ Politics”
(co-authored with Martina Tazzioli)
Social Text Volume 41, Number 3 (Issue #156) (First published online: 27 September 2023)
“Migration, Race, and the Racializing Strategy of Borders”
International Migration, Volume 62, Number 5 (Published online: September 15, 2024)
“Commentary” on the theme of “Migration and Race”
“Minor Keywords of Political Theory: Migration as a Critical Standpoint”
A collective writing project involving 22 co-authors; coordinated, co-edited, and introduced by Nicholas De Genova and Martina Tazzioli
Environment & Planning C: Politics and Space Volume 40, Number 4 (2022; first published online: March 10, 2021)
in Catherine Ramírez, Sylvanna Falcón, Juan Poblete, Steve McKay, and Felicity Amaya Schaeffer (eds.),
Precarity and Belonging: Labor, Migration, and Noncitizenship (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2021)
“‘Everything Is Permitted’: Trump, White Supremacy, Fascism”
American Anthropologist (published online: March 23, 2020)
Commentary, online supplement to Special Section on “The Anthropology of White Supremacy”