Jason De León

/in /by
Jason De Leon

Jason De León

Professor
Core Faculty

Anthropology

Office: Haines Hall 364

Phone: (310) 825-5447

Curriculum Vitae

Biography

I am an anthropologist interested in the violent social process of undocumented migration from Latin America to the United States. I direct the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP), a long-term study of clandestine border crossing that uses a combination of ethnographic, archaeological, visual, and forensic approaches to understand this phenomenon in a variety of geographic contexts including the Sonoran Desert of Southern Arizona and the Mexico/Guatemala border. My first book, The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail (UC Pres 2015) focused on the impacts of the U.S. border enforcement policy known as “Prevention Through Deterrence” that has led to the deaths of thousands of people in the Arizona desert. My second book, “Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling” (2024 Viking Press), examines the everyday lives of Honduran smugglers moving migrants across Mexico. Soldiers and Kings won the 2024 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

I am currently working on a book about the praxis of photoethnography.

I hold the Lloyd E. Cotsen Endowed Chair in Archaeology and have a split faculty position in the Departments of Chicana/o and Central American Studies and Anthropology. I am the Director of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, which is where my research lab is located.

 

Education

  • PhD, Anthropology, Penn State University (2008)
  • MA,  Anthropology, Penn State University (2004)
  • BA, Anthropology, UCLA (2001)

Selected Publications

 

  • 2024 J. De León
    Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling, Viking Press.
  • 2024 J. De León
    Exposure. “Wendy Ewald.” In Collaboration: A Potential History of Photography, eds. A, Azoulay, W. Ewald, S. Meiselas, L. Raiford, and L. Wexler, pp. 165; Thames and Hudson, New York.
  • 2023 J. De León
    Exposure. In Solarities: Elemental Encounters and Refractions, edited by C. Howe, J. Diamanti, and A. Moore, pps. 105-115. Society for Cultural Anthropology’s Theorizing the Contemporary series, Punctum Books.
  • 2023 N. Smith, G. Canter, A. Shipman, C. Gokee, H. Stewart, and J. De León
    “Hostile Terrain 94: Using an Archaeological Sensibility to Raise Awareness about Migrant Death along the U.S.-Mexico Border,” in Archaeology Outside-the-Box, ed. H. Barnard, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, Los Angeles, California.
  • 2021 S. Campbell-Staton, R. Walker, S. Rogers, J. De León, H. Landecker, W. Porter, P. Mathewson, and R. Long
    Quantifying Thermohydric Costs of Undocumented Human Migration Across the Southern United States Border. Science 374(6574):1496-1500.
  • 2021 H. Stewart, C. Gokee, and J. De León
    Counter-Infrastructures in the US-Mexico Borderlands (1848-Present): An Archaeological Perspective. World Archaeology 53(3):469-485.
  • 2020 C. Gokee, H. Stewart, and J. De León
    Scales of Suffering in the U.S./Mexico Borderlands. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 24(2): 823-851.
  • 2019 J. De León
    “Como Me Duele”: Central American Bodies and the Moral Economy of Undocumented Migration. In The Border and Its Bodies: The Corporeality of Risk in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, pp. 99-123, edited by T. Sheridan and R. McGuire. University of Arizona Press.
  • 2019 J. De León and C. Gokee
    Lasting Value? Engaging with the Material Traces of America’s Undocumented Migration “Problem,” In Cultural Heritage, Ethics and Contemporary Migrations, eds. C. Holtorf, A. Pantazatos and G. Scarre, pp. 70-86, Routledge Press.
  • 2018 J. De León
    The Photoethnographic Eye: Visualizing the Honduran Migrant Experience in Mexico. In Out of Bounds: Photography and Migration, edited by T. Sheehan, Routledge Press.
  • 2017 J. De León
    The New Colossus: Contextualizing and Historicizing Fragments of 21st Century Undocumented Migration. In Many Voices, One Nation: A Material History of the Peopling of America, eds. M. Salazar-Porzio and J. Fragaszy Troyano, pp. 257-267, Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, Washington D.C.
  • 2015 J. De León
    The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Sonoran Desert Migrant Trail. University of California Press, Berkeley.
  • 2014 J. Beck, I. Ostericher, G. Sollish, and J. De León
    Scavenging Behavior in the Sonora Desert and Implications for Documenting Border Crosser Fatalities. Journal of Forensic Sciences 60:S11-S20.
  • 2012 J. De León
    “Better To Be Hot Than Caught”: Excavating the Conflicting Roles of Migrant
    Material Culture. American Anthropologist 114(3):477-495.
  • 2009 J. De León, K. Hirth and D. Carballo
    Exploring Formative Period Obsidian Blade Trade: Three Distribution Models. Ancient Mesoamerica 20:113-128.