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Based on the research for his upcoming book, Soldiers and Kings, Jason De León puts the spotlight on the billion-dollar human smuggling industry that resulted from both U.S. and Mexican immigration and border policies. Using his unforgettable photography and powerful prose, he documents the daily lives of Honduran smugglers who due to heightened security measures, make profit from transporting undocumented migrants across Mexico. In this eye-opening talk, he discusses the evolving, complicated relationship between transnational gangs, the human smuggling industry, and the migrants caught in this violent social process.
Speaker Jason De León, Professor of Anthropology and Chicana/o Studies at UCLA, creates public dialogue, exhibitions, and media about undocumented migration and the ongoing humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. He has been recognized with a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for his work as an anthropologist and scholar examining the inequalities and brutalities of human migration through a variety of lenses. De León shines a light on the human consequences of U.S. immigration and border policies, offers a counterpoint to public media perception of migrants, and puts names, faces, and stories to the thousands of individuals who have died in their attempt to reach the United States.
In collaboration with Ethnicity, Migration, Rights, DRCLAS Latinx Initiative, Contemporary Ethnography and Social Inequality Workshop, and the Harvard Department of History.