Austin Kocher, Ph.D.

Kocher is a political and legal geographer studying the theories, laws, and institutional practices behind immigration enforcement. Assistant Professor with Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), Affiliated Faculty in the Department of Geography at the Maxwell School, and Research Fellow at American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies and the Immigration Lab. His research has appeared in journals such as Antipode, American Behavioral Scientist, Territory, Politics, Governance, Societies, Georgetown Law Journal, and Journal of Latin American Geography.

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Recent Publications

1. Davidson, L., Hlass, L., & Kocher. A. (2023) “The Double Abandonment of Immigrant Youth: How the Special Immigrant Juvenile Status Program Harms Those It Was Designed to Protect.” Georgetown Law Review. Available online.
2. Kocher, A. (2023). Glitches in the Digitization of Asylum: How CBP One Turns Migrants’ Smartphones into Mobile Borders. Societies, 13(6), 149. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc13060149
   
3. Kocher, A. (2023). Growing Numbers of Afghan Migrants Face Deportation in Court. The Immigration Lab Blog. https://theimmigrationlab.org/blog/f/growing-numbers-of-afghan-migrants-face-deportation-in-court
4. Jones, R., Kocher, A., Sultana, F., Smiles, D., McSweeney, K., & Molnar, P. (2023). Interventions on public geographies. Political Geography. Temporary share link: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1i7xC3Qu6ufdJz.

Upcoming Events & Speaking Engagements

• January 10-12, 2024: Presenting at “Developing Innovative Research Approaches to Address the Needs of People on the Move” workshop at Barnard College in New York City.
• March 5, 2024: Speaking at “Immigration and Freedom of Expression” panel event at Cornell University. (more information to come)

Presenting on the immigration courts at the Law & Society Association conference.

Recent Events & Speaking Engagements

November 2023

• November 17, 2023: Overcoming Institutional Closure in Immigration Research: How TRAC Uses Public Records Requests to Study the Deportation State. At the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology at the University of Washington. More info + registration.

October 2023

• October 6-7, 2023: Participating in Emerging Immigration Scholars Conference at UCLA.
• October 11-13, 2023: Presenting at Race, Ethnicity, and Place Conference in Washington, D.C.

September 2023

• Presented paper at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law titled “FOIA as Method: Mapping the Digital Architectures of the Immigration State.”

July 2023

• July, 2023: Participating in international workshop on immigration data in Canada.

June 2023

• Published new article in Societies titled “Glitches in the Digitization of Asylum: How CBP One Turns Migrants’ Smartphones into Mobile Borders.” (No paywall.) See my write-up on Substack here.
• June 1-4, 2023: Law and Society Association conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico in a session titled “Legal Violence, Precarity, and Migrant Youth” with Laila Hlass, Rachel Davidson, Chiara Galli, Valeria Gomez, and Rebecca Hamlin as discussant. Learn more about the conference here.
• June 15 & 16, 2023: Speaking at Emerging Immigration Scholars Conference at George Washington University. Join me at the panel on Teaching & Advocacy on Friday morning. Register or learn more here.

May 2023

• May 18-19, 2023: Panel on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) at the Transparency Conference in Washington, D.C., hosted by the American Immigration Council.

April 2023

• April 13, 2023: Invited research presentation on electronic monitoring of migrants at the University of Baltimore School of Law.
• April 13-15, 2023: Invited research presentation on asylum at the International Conference on Forced Migation at UCLA.
• April 27-28, 2023: Spoke at the Annual Latino Public Affairs Forum hosted by the Center for Latin American & Latino Studies at American University where I recently started as a research fellow. Learn more about the event here.