Gabriella Sanchez

Gabriella E. Sanchez is the 2012-2013 Visiting Lecturer on Transnational Feminisms and Migration at Wellesley College’s Women and Gender Studies Department. An anthropologist by training, Professor Sanchez is a graduate of Arizona State University’s Justice and Social Inquiry Program. Her research interests include crime, migration, and national security discourses with a focus on border regions.

Professor Sanchez has conducted fieldwork along the U.S. - Mexico Border, Central America, North Africa and the Middle East, where she has documented the experiences of the men and women involved in drug and human smuggling operations as traffickers/smugglers. A Boren and a Fulbright fellow,  she was also a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Maryland’s Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism(START) where she led a study on transnational organized crime in Mexico and Central America.  

Professor Sanchez’s work characterizes the underground economies of the border as mechanisms that foster community ties and that carry no criminal intentions. Her research, alongside that of scholars like David Spener, Rodolfo Casillas, Sheldon Zhang and Ko-Lin Chin has shown that the majority of smuggling operations are conducted by low-income, marginalized individuals as a means  to strengthen family and community ties, establish social status and, on occasion, as a source of supplemental income. Furthermore, she has found no evidence of ties between community-based operations and transnational criminal organizations.  Violence, if present, is only relied upon sporadically by participants. The increase in the numbers of kidnappings and other forms of violence against undocumented migrants in transit along borders around the world is not tied to smuggling organizations alone. Instead, the emergence of clearly distinct groups targeting undocumented migrants coincides with the creation of laws criminalizing migrants’ everyday lives and the ensuing reduced likelihood of undocumented immigrants to seek justice.  

Professor Sanchez’s work is informed by her own experiences as a migrant. Growing up as a member of a community in Central Mexico with a long tradition on U.S. – bound undocumented migration, she witnessed the impact U.S. immigration and border control policy had on the increased risks faced by migrants traveling to and from Mexico, and on the changing roles –and increasing difficulties-- of community-based smuggling networks at providing safe transits.  Her experience working in Maricopa County, Arizona as a Latina court officer during the time that preceded the introduction of SB1070 also provided her with invaluable perspectives on the actions that led to the state-sanctioned criminalization of Latinos and Latino migrants in that state.

Her work on the impact of anti-immigrant legislation in Arizona follows the footsteps of scholars like Mary Romero, Raquel Rubio-Goldsmith and Anna Ochoa-O’Leary, who have highlighted the implications of immigration enforcement on human and civil rights along communities on the U.S. Mexico Border.  She is also part of a growing generation of border studies scholars like Robin Reineke and Daniel Martinez committed to place social justice concerns at the front and center of the discussion on border research. She has been an active participant of initiatives from the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, Human Rights Watch and the International Committee of the Red Cross on issues related to migrants’ human rights and the reduction of border crossing risks. 

Publications:

Sanchez, Gabriella (2013). Forthcoming. “Women as Human Smugglers on the U.S. Mexico Border.”  Bosworth, Mary and Sharon Pickering, Eds. Punishment and Society.

Romero, Mary and Gabriella Sanchez (2012). “Critical Issues Faced by Latino Defendants.” In Urbina, Martin, ed. Hispanics in the U.S. Criminal Justice System: The New American Demography.  Springfield: Charles C. Thomas.

Sanchez, Gabriella (2011). “The Social Organization of Human Smuggling in the Southwest.”  In Transnational Crime Trafficking Activity Case Studies. START. University of Maryland, College Park.

Provine, Mary and Gabriella Sanchez (2011). “Suspecting Immigrants: Exploring Links between Racialized Anxieties and Expanded Police Powers in Arizona.” Policing and Society. Vol. 21, 4, 468-479.

Sanchez, Gabriella (2011) “Implications of the Enforcement of Anti-Human Trafficking Law: The SB1372   Experience in Maricopa County, Arizona.” In Gould, Chandre, ed. National and International Perspectives on Crime and Policing: Towards a Coherent  Strategy for Crime Reduction in South Africa beyond 2010. Conference Proceedings, Institute for Security Studies: Johannesburg, South Africa.  

Sanchez, Gabriella and Mary Romero (2010). “Critical Race Theory in the US Sociology of  Immigration.”  Sociology Compass. Vol. 4, 779–788.

Sanchez, Gabriella. (2009) “Agency and Migration in Human Smuggling.” Johns Hopkins Journal of Human Rights and Civil Society. Vol. 2, 125-130.