Dr Nicholas De Genova

Dr. De Genova conducted extensive ethnographic research among transnational Mexican/ migrant factory workers in Chicago during the 1990s.  His research focused on the conjunctures of racialisation, labour subordination, the production of transnational urban space, and the politics of immigration and citizenship in the United States.  His more recent research concerns the politics of immigration, race, and citizenship in the United States in the aftermath of the so-called War on Terror.  His work has been centrally concerned with the critical examination of the United States as a racial and imperial formation, as well as the inter-relationship of the United States and Latin America.  He is also interested in race, nationalism, and citizenship in the UK, other European countries, and beyond, as well as the securitisation of human mobility on a global scale.

For more detailed information and access to Dr. De Genova’s articles, visit his personal website

Dr De Genova co-organises the Migration Workshop

Teaching

Dr Nicholas De Genova convenes the MA in Anthropology and Cultural Politics.

He teaches on the following courses:

• Anthropology and Cultural Politics
• General Principles of Social Anthropology

Areas of supervision

Dr. De Genova would be particularly interested in supervising research projects on any of the following topics: 

migration; migrant “illegality” and undocumented labour; border policing, migrant detention, and deportation; the freedom of movement; citizenship; the state; securitisation; nationalism; racial subjugation and racialisation; labour subordination and the politics of class; the social production of space

Research interests

Nicholas De Genova is the author of Working the Boundaries: Race, Space, and "Illegality" in Mexican Chicago (Duke University Press, 2005); co-author of Latino Crossings: Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and the Politics of Race and Citizenship (Routledge, 2003); editor of Racial Transformations: Latinos and Asians Remaking the United States (Duke University Press, 2006); and co-editor of The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement (Duke University Press, 2010). 

Dr. De Genova is currently completing two new books.  One is an academic study, titled The Spectacle of Terror: Immigration, Race, and the Homeland Security State.  The second, Crossing the Line: A Memoir of Free Speech during Wartime, addresses questions of political urgency for a much broader public. 

In addition, Dr. De Genova is developing another book, The Migrant Metropolis, concerned with contemporary transformations in urban life as crucial intersections of state power and sovereignty, regimes of mobility control, and the freedom of movement, especially as this latter figure may be explored in relation to the autonomy of migration and the transnational production of space.

Dr. De Genova is one of the organizers of an interdisciplinary workshop and reading group for postgraduate students and teaching and research staff at Goldsmtihs, on “Migrant struggles, practices of citizenship, and techniques of bordering” (sponsored by the Department of Politics).

For more detailed information and access to Dr. De Genova’s articles, visit his personal website

Selected publications

Books (asAuthor):

In Progress, n.d.

The Spectacle of Terror: Immigration, Race, and the Homeland Security State

2005 (Duke University Press)

Working the Boundaries: Race, Space, and “Illegality” in Mexican Chicago

2003 (Routledge)

(co-authored with Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas):

Latino Crossings: Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and the Politics of Race and Citizenship

Books (as Editor):

2010 (Duke University Press)

(co-edited with Nathalie Peutz)

The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement

2006 (Duke University Press)

Racial Transformations: Latinos and Asians Remaking the United States

Journal Articles (as Author):

Under review, n.d.

“Spectacles of Migrant ‘Illegality’: The Scene of Exclusion, the Obscene of Inclusion,” for inclusion in special thematic issue in Ethnic and Racial Studies

2010a

“The Queer Politics of Migration: Reflections on ‘Illegality’ and Incorrigibility,” in Studies in Social Justice Volume 4, Number 2 (special thematic issue on Migrant Rights Activism)

2010b

“Antiterrorism, Race, and the New Frontier: American Exceptionalism, Imperial Multiculturalism, and the Global Security State,” in Identities Volume17, Number 6 (special thematic issue on “The New Frontiers of Race”)

2010c

“Migration and Race in Europe: The Trans-Atlantic Metastases of a Post-Colonial Cancer,” in European Journal of Social Theory Volume 13, Number 3

2010d

“The Management of ‘Quality’: Class Decomposition and Racial Formation in a Chicago Factory” in Dialectical Anthropology Volume 34, Number 2 (with Commentaries)

2010e

“Reply to Mishler, Harney, and Roediger: Production, Class, Race ... and Labor as Subject” in Dialectical Anthropology Volume 34, Number 2 (Response to Commentaries)

2009a

“Conflicts of Mobility and the Mobility of Conflict: Rightlessness, Presence, Subjectivity, Freedom,” in Subjectivity Volume 29, Number 1

2009b

“Sovereign Power and the ‘Bare Life’ of Elvira Arellano,” in Feminist Media Studies Volume 9, Number 2

2009c

“‘Illegale’ Migranten, ‘Migrantenrechten’ en ‘Antiterrorisme’ in de Verenigde Staten,” in Kritiek: Jaarboek voor socialistische Discussie en Analyse 2009 (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

2008a

“‘American’ Abjection: ‘Chicanos,’ Gangs, and Mexican/Migrant Transnationality in Chicago,” in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies Volume 33, Number 2

2008b

“Inclusion through Exclusion: Explosion or Implosion?” in Amsterdam Law Forum Volume 1, Number 1 (available at: www.amsterdamlawforum.org) (reprinted in Special Issue: Amsterdam Law Forum in Review, 2008-2011; Year III - May 2011)

2007a

“The Production of Culprits: From Deportability to Detainability in the Aftermath of ‘Homeland Security’,” in Citizenship Studies Volume 11, Number 5

2007b

“The Stakes of an Anthropology of the United States,” in CR: The New Centennial Review Volume 7, Number 2

2006

“The Everyday Civil War: Migrant Working Men, Within and Against Capital,” in Ethnography Volume 7, Number 2

2004a

“The Legal Production of Mexican/Migrant ‘Illegality’,” in Latino Studies Volume 2, Number 2

2004b

“La producción legal de la ‘ilegaledad’ migrante mexicana,” in Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos Number 52 (Buenos Aires)

2003a

“Latino Rehearsals: Racialization and the Politics of Citizenship Between Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago” (co-authored with Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas), in Journal of Latin American Anthropology Volume 8, Number 2

2003b

“Latino Racial Formations in the United States: An Introduction” (with Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas), in Journal of Latin American Anthropology Volume 8, Number 2

2002

“Migrant ‘Illegality’ and Deportability in Everyday Life” in Annual Review of Anthropology #31

1998

“Race, Space, and the Reinvention of Latin America in Mexican Chicago,” in Latin American Perspectives Volume 25, Number 5 (Issue #102)

1995a

“Gangster Rap and Nihilism in Black America: Some Questions of Life and Death,” in Social Text #43

1995b

“Check Your Head: The Cultural Politics of Rap Music,” in Transition #67

 

Book Chapters (as Author):

Under Review, n.d.

“The Perplexities of Mobility” in Ola Söderström, Didier Ruedin, Shalini Randeria, Gianni D’Amato, and Francesco Panese (eds.), Critical Mobilities (London: Routledge - and - Lausanne: Presses Polytechniques et Universitaires Romandes)

In Press, 2011a

 “The Securitarian Society of the Spectacle,” in Zeynep Gambetti and Marcial Godoy-Anativia (eds.), States of Insecurity (New York: New York Univsity Press)

In Press, 2011b

“The ‘War on Terror’ as Racial Crisis: Homeland Security, Obama, and Racial (Trans)Formations,” in Daniel HoSang, Oneka LaBennett, and Laura Pulido (eds.), Racial Formation in the Twenty- First Century (Berkeley: University of California Press)

In Press, 2011c

“Border, Scene and Obscene,” in Thomas Wilson and Hastings Donnan (eds.), A Companion to Border Studies (Oxford, UK and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell)

2011a

“Spectacle of Security, Spectacle of Terror,” in Shelley Feldman, Charles Geisler, and Gayatri Menon (eds.), Accumulating Insecurity: Violence and Dispossession in the Making of Everyday Life (Athens: University of Georgia Press)

2011b

“Alien Powers: Deportable Labour and the Spectacle of Security,” in Vicki Squire (ed.), The Contested Politics of Mobility: Borderzones and Irregularity (London: Routledge)

2010a

“The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement” Theoretical Overview, in Nicholas De Genova and Nathalie Peutz (eds.), The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement (Durham, NC: Duke University Press)

2010b

“Introduction” (co-authored with Nathalie Peutz), in Nicholas De Genova and Nathalie Peutz (eds.), The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement (Durham, NC: Duke University Press)

2010c

“‘White Puerto Rican’ Migrants, the Mexican Colony, and ‘Americanization’: Reflections on a Moment of Danger in Latino History,” in Mérida Rúa (ed.), Latino Urban Ethnography and the Work of Elena Padilla (Urbana: University of Illinois Press)

2010d

“Latino Racial Formations in the United States” (with Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas), in Barbara Katz-Rothman and Heather Dalmage (eds.), Race in an Era of Change: A Reader

(New York: Oxford University Press)

2009

“The Production of Culprits: From Deportability to Detainability in the Aftermath of ‘Homeland Security’,” in Peter Nyers (ed.), Securitizations of Citizenship (New York: Routledge)

2007

“The Everyday Civil War: Migrant Labor, Capital, and Latino Studies” Commissioned submission in Juan Flores and Renato Rosaldo (eds.), A Companion to Latino

Studies (New York: Blackwell)

2006a

“Introduction: Latino and Asian Racial Formations at the Frontiers of U.S. Nationalism,” in Nicholas De Genova (ed.), Racial Transformations: Latinos and Asians Remaking the United States (Durham, NC: Duke University Press)

2006b

“The Legal Production of Mexican/Migrant ‘Illegality,’” in Suzanne Oboler (ed.), Latinos and Citizenship: The Dilemma of Belonging (New York: Palgrave)

2005

“La production légal de l’‘illégalité’ des migrants/ Mexicains,” in Emmanuel Grez and Coline Pellegrini (eds.), Politiques migratoires: grandes et petites manoeuvres (Lyon: Éditions Carobella Ex-Natura)

2004

“La produzione giuridica dell’illegalità: Il caso dei migranti messicani negli Stati Uniti,” in Sandro Mezzadra (ed), I confini della libertà: Per un'analisi politica delle migrazioni contemporanee (Rome: DeriveApprodi)

 

Photo Essays (as Author/ Photographer):

1997

“The Junkyard of Futures Past,”

in Anthropology and Humanism Volume 22, Number 2

1996

“Split-Level Bedlam: Chicago at the End of the Twentieth Century,”

in Public Culture Volume 9, Number 1

 

Journal Issues (As Editor):

2003

Co-Editor, with Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas

Special Theme Issue: “Latino Racial Formations in the United States”

Journal of Latin American Anthropology Volume 8, Number 2

 

OnlineForumArticles (AsAuthor):

2006

Title: Migrant “Illegality” and the Metaphysics of Antiterrorism: “Immigrants’ Rights” in the Aftermath of the Homeland Security State

Forum Theme: “Border Battles: The U.S. Immigration Debates”

Social Science Research Council

In Spanish translation: La “ilegalidad” migratoria y la metafísica del antiterrorismo: Los “derechos de los inmigrantes” como secuelas del Estado de Seguridad Nacional Rebelión: El Cuarto Reich

In French translation: L’illégalité des migrants et la métaphysique de la lutte contre le terrorisme: les « droits des migrants » comme aspect collatéral de la doctrine de sécurité nationale US

Tlaxcala: The Translators’ Network for Linguistic Diversity

 

Occasional Essays on the Politics of Scholarship (as Author):

2011a

Nicholas De Genova, contribution to the Public Anthropology review essay (compiled and edited by Melissa Checker): “ ‘Year That Trembled and Reel’d’: Reflections on Public Anthropology a Decade after 9/11”

in American Anthropologist 113(3) (September 2011): 491-97

2011b

“Reflections on the future of Latino Studies in Anthropology”

Presentation to the Association of Latina and Latino Anthropologists (ALLA) Book Award Winners Roundtable: "Latina and Latino Anthropology for the Next Decade," 109th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association (New Orleans, 19 November 2010; posted 13 September 2011)

Association of Latina and Latino Anthropologists (ALLA)

 

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For more detailed information and access to Dr. De Genova’s articles, visit his personal website