Susan Bibler Coutin

Picture of Susan Bibler Coutin
Professor, Criminology, Law & Society
School of Social Ecology
B.Arch., Stanford University, 1990, Sociocultural Anthropology
Phone: (949) 824-1447 or 7912
Fax: (949) 824-3001
Email: scoutin@uci.edu
University of California, Irvine
3375 SEII
Mail Code: 7080
Irvine, CA 92697
Research Interests
Law, culture, immigration, human rights, citizenship, political activism, Central America
Academic Distinctions
2017 UC Irvine Social Ecology Dean’s Award for Inclusive Excellence in Research for Exiled Home: Salvadoran Transnational Youth in the Aftermath of Violence (award shared with Walter Nicholls)
2015-2018 National Science Foundation, Law and Social Sciences research grant for the project, Navigating Ambiguous Legalities: Executive Relief and the Roles of Mediating Institutions.” With Sameer Ashar, Jennifer Chacón and Stephen Lee as co-PIs.

2016 University of California, Humanities Research Institute Funding for the project, “Ethnographic Fictions: Adoption, Immigration and Sociolegal Knowledge.” With Barbara Yngvesson.

2014-2015 Russell Sage Foundation Presidential Authority Grant for the project, “Liminal Legalities along Pathways to Citizenship: The Role of Brokering Organizations,” with Sameer Ashar, Jennifer Chacón and Stephen Lee as co-PIs.

2011-2015 National Science Foundation, Law and Social Science Program, Research Grant for the Project, “On the Record: Archival Practices in Immigrant and Indigenous Advocacy,” with Justin Richland (University of Chicago), Co-PI.

2010-2013 Co-PI, Department of Education FIPSE grant for the project, “Diverse Educational Community and Doctoral Experience (DECADE),” UCI Graduate Division and ADVANCE Program

2004-2005 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Research and Writing Grant,
Research Abstract
Susan Bibler Coutin holds a Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology and is professor in the Department of Criminology, Law, and Society and the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. Her research has examined social, political, and legal activism surrounding immigration issues, particularly immigration from El Salvador to the United States. Her first book, THE CULTURE OF PROTEST: RELIGIOUS ACTIVISM AND THE U.S. SANCTUARY MOVEMENT (Westview 1993) analyzed how congregations that declared themselves “sanctuaries” for Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees constructed a means and a language of protesting U.S. refugee and foreign policy in the 1980s. Her second book, LEGALIZING MOVES: SALVADORAN IMMIGRANTS’ STRUGGLE FOR U.S. RESIDENCY (U. Michigan Press, 2000), analyzed how Salvadoran immigrants negotiated their legal identities in the United States in the 1990s, a period characterized by immigration reform in the U.S. and post-war reconstruction in El Salvador. Her third book, NATIONS OF EMIGRANTS: SHIFTING BOUNDARIES OF CITIZENSHIP IN EL SALVADOR AND THE UNITED STATES (Cornell University Press, 2007), considers how current forms of migration challenge conventional understandings of borders, citizenship, and migration itself. NATIONS OF EMIGRANTS is based on interviews with policymakers and activists in El Salvador and the United States as well as on Salvadoran emigrants’ accounts of their journeys to the United States, their lives in the U.S., and, in some cases, their removal to El Salvador. Her newest book, EXILED HOME: SALVADORAN TRANSNATIONAL YOUTH IN THE AFTERMATH OF VIOLENCE (Duke University Press, 2016) examines the experiences of 1.5 generation migrants, that is, individuals who were born in El Salvador but raised in the United States. Based on interviews with 1.5 generation Salvadorans in Southern California and in El Salvador, this book explores the power and limitations of nation-based categories of membership. She recently completed is NSF-funded research regarding how the production, retrieval, and circulation of records and files figures in immigrants’ efforts to secure legal status in the United States. Currently, in collaboration with law school colleagues Sameer Ashar, Jennifer Chacon, and Stephen Lee and with funding from the Russell Sage Foundation and the National Science Foundation, she is carrying out a new project entitled, “Navigating Liminal Legalities along Pathways to Citizenship: Immigrant Vulnerability and the Role of Mediating Institutions.” A preliminary report based on this project is available at http://www.russellsage.org/research/reports/navigating-liminal-legalitie…
Publications
Mitchell, Julie and Susan Coutin. 2019. “Living Documents in Transnational Spaces of Migration between El Salvador and the United States.” Law and Social Inquiry 1-28.
Coutin, Susan and Barbara Yngvesson. 2023. Documenting Impossible Realities: Ethnography, Memory and the “As If.” Cornell University Press
Amy Magnus, Susan Bibler Coutin, and Frances Leslie. 2023. “Doing Diversity Work in Higher Education: Systemic Inequality, Institutional Change, and Campus Attitudes.” Equity in Education and Society.
Fortin, Véronique and Susan Bibler Coutin. 2023. “The Craft of Translation: Documentary Practices within Immigrant Advocacy in the United States." PoLAR : Political and Legal Anthropology Review
Coutin, Susan Bibler, Sameer Ashar, Jennifer Chacón, Stephen Lee and Jason Palmer. 2022. “Shapeshifting Displacement: Notions of Membership and Deservingness Forged by Illegalized Residents.” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 12(3): 339-353.
Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2021. “Borders and Crossings: Lessons of the 1980s Central American Solidarity Movement for 2010s Sanctuary Practices.” In Critical Diálogos in Latina/o/x Studies, Ana Y. Ramos Zayas and Mérida M. Rúa eds. New York University Press.
Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2021. “Uncertainty and Educational Mismatch: Schooling and Life Pursuits in Contexts of Illegalization.” Beyond Borders: Essays on the Human Rights of Non-Citizens at Home and Abroad. Molly Land, Kathryn Libal, and Jillian Chambers, eds.), pp. 183-199. CUP press
Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2021. “Transgressing Boundaries through New Legal Realist Approaches: Affinity and Collaboration within Ethnographic Research on Immigration Law and Policy.” New Legal Realism, Volume 2. Beth Mertz, ed. Cambridge University Press
Coutin, Susan Bibler and Véronique Fortin. 2021. “Exclusionary Inclusion: Applying for Legal Status in the United States.” In Catherine S. Ramírez, Sylvanna M. Falcón, Juan Poblete, Steven C. McKay, Felicity Amaya Schaeffer, eds., Precarity and Belonging: Labor, Migration, and Non-citizenship. Rutgers University Press
Sanchez, Linda E. and Susan Bibler Coutin. 2020. “Insurgent Collaboration: Sanctuary as Research Practice.” Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 9(1):106-110. https://doi.org/10.1525/dcqr.2020.9.1.106
Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2020. "Opportunities and Double-binds: Legal Craft in an Era of Uncertainty.” In Paper Trails: Migrants, Documents, and Legal Insecurity, Sarah Horton and Josiah Heyman, eds., pp. 130-152. Durham: Duke University Press.
Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2019. “’Otro Mundo Es Posible’: Tempering the Power of Immigration Law through Activism, Advocacy, and Action.” Buffalo Law Review 67, 653.
2016 Exiled Home: Salvadoran Transnational Youth in the Aftermath of Violence. Durham: Duke University Press.
• Awarded the 2017 UC Irvine Social Ecology Dean’s Award for Inclusive Excellence in Research (award shared with Walter Nicholls)

2007 Nations of Emigrants: Shifting Boundaries of Citizenship in El Salvador and the United States. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• Chapter Seven translated and reprinted as “Sí, se puede! Los sin papeles en Estados Unidos y la lucha por la legalización en los primeros años del siglo XXI.” In Liliana Suárez-Navaz, Angela Moreno, y Raquel Moreno García (Eds.) La lucha de los "Sin papeles" y la extensión de la ciudadanía: una perspectiva global, Madrid: Ed. Traficantes de Sueños, 2007, pp. 155-184.
2016. Special Issue. “Migrant Narratives and Ethnographic Tropes: Navigating Tragedy, Creating Possibility.” (Coedited with Erica Vogel) Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 45(6).

2008 Symposium, “Law, Ethnography, and the Limits of Explanation.” (Co-edited with Barbara Yngvesson) PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 31(1).
**Coutin, Susan Bibler. Forthcoming. “The post-1996 Immigrant Underclass: Internal Borders, Child Arrivals, and Spaces of Nonexistence.” In Deborah Boehm and Susan Terrio, eds., Il/legal Encounters: Migration, Detention, and Deportation in the Lives of Young People. New York: New York University Press.

**Mitchell, Julie and Susan Coutin. Forthcoming. “Living Documents in Transnational Spaces of Migration between El Salvador and the United States.” Law and Social Inquiry.

**Coutin, Susan. 2018. “President Trump and Zero Tolerance for Victims of Persecution.” The Globe Post. June 18. Available at https://www.theglobepost.com/2018/06/18/trump-us-immigration-policy/

**Abarca, Gray and Susan Bibler Coutin. 2018. “DACA Preliminary Injunctions: The State Deferred.” Blog post. American Ethnological Society. Available at http://americanethnologist.org/features/reflections/daca-preliminary-injunctions-the-state-deferred. 18 April.

**Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2018. “Temporary Status Means Permanent Uncertainty: Salvadorans and TPS.” Blog entry. Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict and World Order. Available at http://www.socialjusticejournal.org/temporary-status-means-permanent-uncertainty/.

**Abarca, Gray and Susan Coutin. 2018. “Sovereign Intimacies: The Lives of Documents within State-Noncitizen Relationships.” American Ethnologist 45(1):7-19.

** Chacón, Jennifer and Susan Coutin. 2018. “Racialization through Immigration Enforcement.” In Race, Criminal Justice & Migration Control, Mary Bosworth, Alpa Parmar & Yolanda Vázquez, eds. Oxford University Press.

**Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2018. “Salvadoran Child and Youth Migrants.” In Jacqueline Bhabha, Jyothi Kanics, and Daniel Senovilla Hernandez, eds., The Handbook on Migration and Childhood, pp. 113-126. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.

**Reiter, Keramet and Susan Bibler Coutin. 2017. “Methodologies for Comparing Experiences Across Diverse Institutions.” Guest Blog on Comparative Criminology. University of Cambridge, Institute of Criminology. Available at https://www.compen.crim.cam.ac.uk/Blog/blog-pages-full-versions/blog-15-reitercoutin. Accessed October 23, 2017.

**Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2017. “Ending DACA: Too Many Losses.” The Globe Post http://www.theglobepost.com/2017/09/06/daca-rationale-trump-immigrants/. September 6.

**Coutin, Susan Bibler, Sameer Ashar, Jennifer Chacón, and Stephen Lee. 2017. “Deferred Action and the Discretionary State: Migration, Precarity, and Resistance.” Citizenship Studies 21(8): 951-968. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13621025.2017.1377153

**Reiter, Keramet and Susan Bibler Coutin. 2017. "Crossing Borders and Criminalizing Identity: The Disintegrated Subjects of Administrative Sanctions." Law and Society Review 51: 567–601

**Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2017. “Sanctuary.” Law and Society Review Blogspot. http://lawandsocietyreview.blogspot.com/2017/07/sanctuary.html

**Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2017. “A Distorted Image of Immigrants.” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review website. https://politicalandlegalanthro.org/2017/02/14/a-distorted-image-of-immigrants/

**Bradford, Anita Casavantes, Laura Enriquez and Susan Coutin. 2017. “10 Ways to Support Students Facing Immigration Crises.” Inside Higher Education. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2017/01/31/how-faculty-members-and-administrators-can-help-immigrant-students-essay. Posted: January 31.

**Coutin, Susan Bibler, Jennifer Chacón, Sameer Ashar, and Stephen Lee. 2017. “Trump’s Policies Will Affect Four Groups of Immigrants.” The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/trumps-policies-will-affect-four-groups-of-undocumented-immigrants-70467. Posted: January 26. Updated: January 31.

** Gabriella Lifsec. 2016. “Nation of Emigrants: An Interview with Susan Coutin.” The Worker Institute, Industrial and Labor Relations School, Cornell University. Available at https://www.ilr.cornell.edu/mobilizing-against-inequality/post/nation-emigrants-interview-susan-coutin Posted: December 2nd.

Coutin, Susan Bibler and Erica Vogel. 2016. “Special Issue: Migrant Narratives and Ethnographic Tropes: Navigating Tragedy, Creating Possibility.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 45(6):631-644.

Ashar, Sameer, Edelina M. Burciaga, Jennifer M. Chacón, Susan Bibler Coutin, Alma Nidia Garza and Stephen Lee. 2015. Navigating Liminal Legalities along Pathways to Citizenship: Immigrant Vulnerability and the Role of Mediating Institutions. Russell Sage Foundation. Available at http://www.russellsage.org/research/reports/navigating-liminal-legalities-along-pathways-to-citizenship-immigrant-vulnerability-and-role-mediati

Coutin, Susan Bibler.” 2015. “Meet the Experts.” Interview available at https://wallethub.com/edu/states-where-hispanics-are-most-assimilated/15591/#susan-bibler-coutin.

Coutin, Susan Bibler and Veronique Fortin. 2015. “Legal Ethnographies and Ethnographic Law.” Wiley Handbook of Law and Society, Austin Sarat and Patricia Ewick, eds. Pp. 71-84.

Yngvesson, Barbara and Susan Bibler Coutin. 2015 “Indignation and Intelligibility: Contradictions that Place Vulnerable Populations ‘Off the Grid.’” Oñati Socio-Legal Series 5(1):90-113.
Susan Bibler Coutin. 2014. “Susan Coutin -- on US Immigration Reform, Youth Migration, the 2014 ‘Border Crisis’ and the Current Model of Immigration Law and Policymaking.” Meridian Beat: Citizens and Strangers, Cornell University. http://meridian-180.org/en/meridian-beat-citizens-and-strangers

Sean Mallin, Susan Coutin and Sally Merry. 2014. “Interview: Coutin & Merry.” PoLAR On-line. https://polarjournal.org/2014/06/12/interview-with-susan-bibler-coutin-and-sally-engle-merry/.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2014 “Deportation Studies: Origins, Themes, and Directions.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 41(4):671-681.

Coutin, Susan Bibler, Justin Richland, and Veronique Fortin. (2014) “Routine Exceptionality: The Plenary Power Doctrine, Immigrants, and the Indigenous under US Law." University of California, Irvine Law Review 4(1):97-120.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2014. “Demystifying Section Presidency.” Anthropology News. http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2014/05/02/demystifying-the-apla-section-presidency/ Accessed May 15, 2014.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2014. Contributor to Canada Fulbright Blog, “The United States of America: The Neighbor You Don’t Know.” Available at http://www.fulbrightblog.ca/united-states-america-neighbour/. Accessed May 15, 2014.

Merry, Sally and Susan Bibler Coutin. 2014. “Technologies of Truth in the Anthropology of Conflict.” American Ethnologist 41(1):1-16.
Adapted version reprinted in Zeitschrift fur Menschenrechte (Journal for Human Rights) Volume 8, No 1, pp. 28-48.

Menjívar, Cecilia and Susan Bibler Coutin. 2014. “Challenges of Recognition, Participation and Representation for the Legally Liminal: A Comment.” In J. Handmaker, ed., Migration, Gender and Social Justice, 325-330. Springer.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2013. “Meet Our Contributor: Susan Bibler Coutin.” Allegra: A Virtual Lab of Legal Anthropology. Available at http://allegralaboratory.net/a-conversation-with-susan-bibler-coutin/. Accessed May 15, 2014.

Seron, Carroll, Susan Bibler Coutin and Pauline White Meeusen. 2013. “Is there a Canon in Law and Social Sciences?” Annual Review of Law & Social Sciences 9:287-306.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2013. “Place and Presence within Salvadoran Deportees’ Narratives of Removal.” Childhood 20(3):323-336.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2013. “In the Breach: Citizenship and its Approximations.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 20(1):109-140.

McGuire, Connie and Susan Bibler Coutin. 2013. “Transnational alienage and foreignness: Deportees and foreign service officers in Central America.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. 20(6), 689-704.
*Reprinted in Transnational Citizenship Across the Americas, forthcoming 2014, Ulla Dalum Berg and Robyn Magalit Rodriguez, eds. Routledge: New York.

Katie Dingeman-Cerda and Susan Bibler Coutin. 2012 “The Ruptures of Return: Deportation’s Confounding Effects.” In Charis M. Kubrin, Marjorie S. Zatz, and Ramiro Martinez, Jr. eds., Punishing Immigrants: Policy, Politics and Injustice, pp. 113-137. New York: New York University Press.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2012. Comment on Gonzales and Chavez, “’Awakening to a Nightmare.’” Current Anthropology 53(3):270-271.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2011. “The Rights of Non-Citizens in the United States.” Annual Review of Law & Social Science. Vol. 7: 289-308.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2011. “Re/Membering the Nation.” Anthropological Quarterly as part of a special issue on “Ethics of Disconnection.” 84(4):809-834.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2011. “Falling Outside: Excavating the History of Central American Asylum Seekers.” Law & Social Inquiry 36(3):569-596.

Coutin, Susan. 2011. “Prohibited Realities and Fractured Persons: Remaking Lives in Transnational Spaces.” Issues in Legal Scholarship 9(1): Article 8. (Denaturalizing Citizenship: a Symposium on Linda Bosniak’s The Citizen and the Alien and Ayelet Shachar’s The Birthright Lottery). Available at: http://www.bepress.com/ils/vol9/iss1/art8.

Coutin, Susan. 2011. “Comment: The Violence of Being Not Quite There.” Law, Culture, and the Humanities 7(3):457-462.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2011. “A Report on the Deportation of Salvadorans Who Immigrated to the United States as Children.” Anthropology of Children and Childhood Newsletter 3(1):4-5.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2011 “’Robbed of a Different Life’: Alternative Histories, Interrupted Futures.” In Hester Lessard, Rebecca Johnson, and Jeremy Webber, eds., Storied Communities: Narratives of Contact and Arrival in Constituting Political Community, pp. 245-267. Vancouver: UBC Press.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2011. “Legal Exclusion and Dislocated Subjectivities: The Deportation of Salvadoran Youth from the United States.” In V.J. Squire, ed., The Contested Politics of Mobility: Borderzones and Irregularity, pp. 169-183. London: Routledge.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2010. “Comment on Daniel Goldstein’s, ‘Toward a Critical Anthropology of Security.’” Current Anthropology 51(4):501-502.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2010. “Originary Destinations: Re/membered Communities and Salvadoran Diasporas.” Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development 39(1-2).

Perla, Hector and Susan Bibler Coutin. 2010. “Legacies and Origins of the U.S.-Central American Sanctuary Movement.” Refuge 26(1):7-19.
• Reprinted in Randy K. Lippert and Sean Rehaag, eds. (2013) Sanctuary Practices in International Perspectives: Migration, Citizenship and Social Movements, pp. 73-91. NewYork: Routledge.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2010. “Confined Within: National Territories as Zones of Confinement.” Political Geography 29(4):200-208.
• Reprinted in Eve Darian-Smith, ed., 2013, Laws and Societies in Global Contexts: Contemporary Approaches. Cambridge University Press.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2010. “Exiled by Law: Deportation and the Inviability of Life.” In The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement, Nathalie Peutz and Nicholas de Genova, eds., Duke University Press.
• Reprinted in Julie Dowling and Jonathan Inda, eds., 2013, Governing Immigration through Crime: A Reader, pp. 233-248. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2009. “Migrants’ Complex Affiliations.” Focus on Law Studies 24(2):2-3, 10.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2008. “Subverting Discourses of Risk in the War on Terror.” In Risk and the War on Terror, Louise Amoore and Marieke de Goede, eds., pp. 218-232. New York: Routledge.

Coutin, Susan Bibler and Barbara Yngvesson. 2008. “Technologies of Knowledge Production: Law, Ethnography and the Limits of Explanation.” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 31(1):1-7.

Yngvesson, Barbara and Susan Bibler Coutin. 2008. “Schrodinger’s Cat and the Ethnography of Law.” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 31(1):61-78.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2006. “Cause Lawyering and Political Advocacy: Moving Law on Behalf of Central American Refugees." In Cause Lawyering and Social Movements, Austin Sarat and Stu Scheingold, eds., pp. 101-119. Stanford University Press.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2006. “Law on the Ground: Jurisdiction, Affiliation, and Transnational Law-making within Unauthorized Migration from El Salvador to the United States," Special issue on “Law Beyond Borders: Jurisdiction in an Era of Globalization," Wayne State Review 51(3):1147-1159.

Hernandez, Ester and Susan Bibler Coutin. 2006. “Remitting Subjects: Migrants, Money, and States.” Economy and Society 35(2):185-208.
• To be reprinted in Migration and Remittances, edited by John Connell, Professor of Geography at the University of Sydney, and Richard Brown, Associate Professor, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.

Yngvesson, Barbara and Susan Bibler Coutin. 2006. "Backed by Papers: Undoing Persons, Histories, and Return." American Ethnologist 33(2):177-190.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2006. “The ‘P’ in APLA.” Anthropology News 47(1):50.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2005. "The Formation and Transformation of Central American Community Organizations in Los Angeles." In Latino Los Angeles: Transformations, Communities, and Activism, Gilda Ochoa and Enrique Ochoa, eds., pp. 155-177. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2005. “Being en Route.” American Anthropologist 107(2):195-206.
• To be reprinted in The International Library of Essays in Law and Society: Ethnography and Law, Eve Darian-Smith, ed. Ashgate publishing, Ltd., forthcoming August 2007.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2005. “Contesting Criminality: Illegal Immigration and the Spatialization of Legality. Theoretical Criminology 9(1):5-33.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2005. “Sanctuary.” In Immigration and Asylum from 1900 to the Present, Matthew Gibney and Randall Hansen, eds. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.


2004 “Salvadorans’ Odyssey.” NACLA Report on the Americas. 37(6):38-41, 43.

2003 "Cultural Logics of Belonging and Movement: Transnationalism, Naturalization, and U.S. Immigration Politics." American Ethnologist 30(4):508-526.

2003 "Borderlands, Illegality and the Spaces of Non-existence." In Globalization and Governmentalities, Richard Perry and Bill Maurer, eds. University of Minnesota Press, pp. 171-202.

2003 "Suspension of Deportation Hearings: Racialization, Immigration, and 'Americanness.'" Journal of Latin American Anthropology 8(2):58-95.

2002 "Reconceptualizing Research: Ethnographic Fieldwork and Immigration Politics in Southern California." In Practicing Ethnography in Law: New Dialogues, Enduring Methods, June Starr and Mark Goodale, eds., pp. 108-127. New York: Palgrave.

2002 "In the Mirror: The Legitimation Work of Globalization." Co-authored with Bill Maurer and Barbara Yngvesson. Law and Social Inquiry 27(4):801-843. (Awarded the 2002 LSA best article prize.)

2001 "Questionable Transactions as Grounds for Legalization: Immigration, Illegality and Law." Crime, Law and Social Change 37:19-36.

2001 "Cause Lawyering in the Shadow of the State: A U.S. Immigration Example." In Cause Lawyering and the State in a Global Era, Austin Sarat and Stu Scheingold, eds., pp. 117-140. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2021. “Sanctuary Then and Now.” In Hot Spots Series, “The Damage Wrought: Immigration Before, Under, and After Trump.” Xitlalli Alvarez Almendariz, Denise Brennan, and Gabrielle Oliveira, eds. Cultural Anthropology. October 19. Available at https://culanth.org/fieldsights/sanctuary-then-and-now
Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2020. “’The Cultural Prerequisites of Law’: Engaging with the Work of Carol Greenhouse over Time.” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review. July 5. Available at: https://polarjournal.org/2020/07/05/the-cultural-prerequisites-of-law-engaging-with-the-work-of-carol-greenhouse-over-time/
2001 "Cause Lawyering in the Shadow of the State: A U.S. Immigration Example." In Cause Lawyering and the State in a Global Era, Austin Sarat and Stu Scheingold, eds., pp. 117-140 Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2001 "The Oppressed, the Suspect, and the Citizen: Subjectivity in Competing Accounts of Political Violence." Law and Social Inquiry 26(1):63-94.
2000 "Anthropology and Pedagogy: An Interview with Bill Maurer." With Jennifer Heung. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 23(2):146-160.
2000 "Denationalization, Inclusion, and Exclusion: Negotiating the Boundaries of Belonging." Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 7(2):585-593.
1999 "Clandestinity and Citizenship among Salvadoran Immigrants." PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review. 22(2):53-63.
1999 "Advocating for Immigrants' Rights: An Interview with Susan Alva." PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review. 22(2):110-119.
1998 "From Refugees to Immigrants: The Legalization Strategies of Salvadoran Immigrants and Activists." International Migration Review 32(4):901-925.
1998 "Naming Resistance: Dissidents, States and Ethnographers." Co-authored with Susan F. Hirsch. Anthropology Quarterly 71(1):1-17.
1996 "From Refugees to Immigrants: The Legal Strategies of Salvadoran Immigrants and their Advocates." Working paper series, Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, University of California, Los Angeles.

1996 "'Differences' within Accounts of U.S. Immigration Law." PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 19(1):11-20.

1995 "'Your Friend, the Illegal': Definition and Paradox within Newspaper Accounts of Immigration Reform." Co-authored with Phyllis Chock. Identities 2(1-2):123-148.

1995 "Smugglers or Samaritans in Tucson, Arizona: Producing and Contesting Legal Truth." American Ethnologist. 22(3):549-571.

1995 "Ethnographies of Violence: Law, Dissidence, and the State." Review essay for Law and Society Review. 29(3):517-539.

1994 "Enacting Law as Social Practice: The U.S. Sanctuary Movement as a Mode of Resistance." In Susan Hirsch and Mindie Lazarus-Black, eds., Contested States: Law, Hegemony, and Resistance, pp. 282-303. New York: Routledge.

1993 "The Chicago Seven and the Sanctuary Eleven: Conspiracy and Spectacle within U.S. Courts." PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 16(3):19-28.
Grants
2015-2019 Navigating Ambiguous Legalities: Executive Relief and the Roles of Mediating Institutions (with Sameer Ashar, Jennifer Chacón, and Stephen Lee, National Science Foundation and Russell Sage) Study of the brokering process through which immigrant-serving organizations in Southern California aid immigrants in navigating the uncertainty associated with deferred action programs created through executive action
Research Centers
Center in Law, Society and Culture https://www.law.uci.edu/centers/clsc/
UC Irvine Law & Ethnography Lab https://sites.uci.edu/ethnographylab/
Last updated
07/06/2023