Erin Routon

Erin Routon is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Houston, specializing in migration, carceral systems, and border politics across the U.S. and Latin America. Her work centers on resistance through legal advocacy and care labor within migrant detention contexts.

Education:

• Ph.D. and M.A. in Anthropology (Latinx Studies minor), Cornell University
• M.A. in Religious Studies, University of California, Riverside
• B.A. in English, University of Hawai’i, Hilo

Dr. Routon’s research examines how legal advocates deploy “legal care” to resist state violence in family detention centers, revealing gendered and racialized dynamics of care labor. She pioneers multisensory ethnography and graphic representation to capture emotional-material entanglements of migration, emphasizing non-traditional caring labor and critiquing state co-optation of humanitarianism.

Her publications consistently analyze U.S.-Mexico border enforcement, family detention, and advocate experiences—highlighting secondary trauma, neoliberal citizenship, and innovative narrative forms like graphic novels. Current projects include two books: a graphic novelization of detention research and a policy study of family separation across presidential administrations.

Scientific Awards:

• Inclusive Practice Fellow, Harvard Inclusive Teaching Institute

Dr. Routon actively partners with immigrant justice organizations including the Southern Poverty Law Center and Boston Immigrant Justice Accompaniment Network, integrating community-based advocacy into her teaching. She prepares University of Houston students for direct engagement with Houston’s immigrant communities through organizing, court accompaniment, and letter-writing campaigns.

Her ongoing work explores translation labor in immigration courts and expands community-university collaborations to challenge carceral systems while centering migrant voices and resilience.