Alejandra Díaz de León is an Assistant Professor in Migration and Violence at the Centre for Sociological Studies (CES) at Colegio de Mexico. She holds a PhD in Sociology and an MA in Human Rights from the University of Essex. Her research focuses on human rights, solidarity, and the creation of bonds, trust, and cooperation among strangers during contexts of violence and uncertainty, like the transit of Central Americans through Mexico to the United States. She has conducted ethnographic research on the southern and northern borders of Mexico, and the Sonoran Desert in the United States. This multi-situated ethnography allowed her to “follow” the migrants and observe them at different stages of their journey.
Her research advances the knowledge of transit migration, an understudied but important stage in the migration process. It contributes to the literature on social networks, social capital and trust, and migration by showing that while preexisting social ties rarely reduce the costs of migrating for Central American migrants, social networks remain a fundamental part of the migration process as transit migrants can improve their chances of succeeding by forming new bonds and cooperating with other migrants who they meet “on the road.” Her findings reveal that solidarity, bonding, and trust are indeed created in contexts of extreme violence and scarcity, in contrast to what scholars on crisis and catastrophes have posited.
She is currently developing two research projects. The first one studies why protests happen in migrant detention centres in Mexico. The second one, co-authored with Guillermo Yrizar, studies how the ethos of the actors that defend and protect migrants in transit affect the type of activism they perform.