Susan Bibler Coutin
· Professor of Criminology, Law & Society and AnthropologyVerifiedUniversity of California, Irvine · Criminology, Law and Society
Active 1993–2025
About
Susan Bibler Coutin is an Associate Dean for Academic Programs and a Professor of Criminology, Law & Society and Anthropology at UCI. Her research focuses on law, immigration, human rights, citizenship, and political activism. She is a faculty director at the UCI Law & Ethnography Lab, where she contributes her expertise in these areas to advance interdisciplinary scholarship and academic programs. Her work engages deeply with the intersections of legal systems and social issues, particularly in the context of immigration and human rights.
Research topics
- Sociology
- Political Science
- Law
- Public relations
- Criminology
- Computer Science
- History
- Pedagogy
- Psychoanalysis
- Public administration
- Economics
- Anthropology
- Psychology
- Geography
Selected publications
Securitization, Humanitarianism, and Plenary Power
2025-08-05
book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding2025-08-05
book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding2025-08-05
book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorrespondingJournal of Ethnic and Migration Studies · 2025-08-21
articleSenior authorCorresponding2025-08-05
book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding2025-08-05
book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorrespondingBanished Men: How Migrants Endure the Violence of Deportation
CrimRxiv · 2025-05-29
preprintOpen access1st authorCorrespondingThe concept of adminigration provides a much-needed lens in theorizing immigration enforcement, citizenship, and urban geographies. We define adminigration as the governance of immigrant community members through city-level policies and programs, whether or not these explicitly focus on immigrants. Our focus on adminigration involves three theoretical interventions: (1) bridging literature on immigrant bureaucratic incorporation and crimmigration to situate city-level administrative practices within immigration policymaking; (2) a focus on how localized definitions of membership, as enacted by cities, produce citizenship, legality, and illegality, and (3) the argument that these practices play out in space, resulting in variegated urban landscapes that are better characterized as a network than a level. We develop these points through a review of the literature on bureaucratic incorporation, crimmigration, citizenship, and the spatialization of immigration policymaking. To illustrate the utility of this framework, we conclude with a case study of adminigration in a California city that we call “Mayville.”
On the Record: Papers, Immigration, and Legal Advocacy
CrimRxiv · 2025-05-29
preprintOpen access1st authorCorrespondingImmigrant residents seeking legal status in the United States face a catch-22: the documents that they must present to immigration officials—bank records, paycheck stubs, and contracts in their own names—are often challenging for undocumented people to obtain. In this book, Susan Bibler Coutin analyzes how undocumented immigrants and the attorneys and paralegals who represent them attempt to surmount this and other documentary challenges. Based on four years of fieldwork and volunteer work in the legal services department of an immigrant-serving nonprofit and in-depth interviews with those seeking status, On the Record explores these complex dynamics by taking seriously both documents themselves and the legal craft that has developed around their use.
Otro mundo es posible (Another World Is Possible)
2025-08-05
book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorrespondingStanford University Press eBooks · 2024-01-30
book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
Recent grants
NSF · $137k · 2006–2011
Executive Relief and the Roles of Mediating Institutions in Immigration Law and Policy
NSF · $230k · 2015–2019
NSF · $290k · 2011–2015
Frequent coauthors
- 26 shared
Barbara Yngvesson
- 22 shared
Jennifer M. Chacón
- 10 shared
Stephen Lee
Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center
- 8 shared
Stephen Lee
- 8 shared
Sameer M. Ashar
- 4 shared
Ester Hernández
- 4 shared
Alma Nidia Garza
The University of Texas at Arlington
- 4 shared
Edelina M. Burciaga
Labs
Education
Ph.D., sociocultural anthropology
Stanford University
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