Alicia Schmidt Camacho

Alicia Schmidt Camacho is a Professor of Ethnicity, Race, and Migration at Yale University and serves as Head of Ezra Stiles College. She holds affiliations with the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration, the Council of Latin American and Iberian Studies, and the American Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Programs.

Her research focuses on Migration, Social Movements, and Cultural Politics, with emphasis on North American contexts. Key areas include transnational labor organizing, border governance, and migrant expressive culture. She authored Migrant Imaginaries: Latino Cultural Politics in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (2008), awarded the Lora Romero Prize, and is currently writing The Carceral Border (NYU Press) and Migrant Justice, which examines human mobility in the era of mass deportation.

Professor Camacho launched the Migrant Justice Initiative (2017), a multidisciplinary project collaborating with organizations like Global Labor Justice and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. She actively engages with local New Haven groups such as Junta for Progressive Action and the Connecticut Bail Fund, advocating for labor, civil, and immigrant rights.

• Key Projects: Theoretical frameworks on marronage and migrant freedom; documentation of migrant-led organizing.
• Awards: Lora Romero First Book Prize in American Studies (2008).
• Teaching: Courses on race, colonialism, border governance, and transnational Latinx communities.