Angie M. Bautista-Chavez

Welcome! I am the Fannie Gaston-Johansson Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University.

At Hopkins, I am a part of the Program in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies and a board member of the Chloe Center for the Critical Study of Racism, Immigration, and Colonialism.

My research examines the development of the American state, migration, borders, bureaucracy, race, and citizenship.

Read “Hierarchy in the Politics of Migration.”

Forthcoming in the Annual Review of Political Science with LaGina Gause: “The Power-Enhancing and Power-Diminishing Effects of Digital Technologies: Marginalized People and US Racial Authoritarianism.”

In my book project, Exporting Borders, I explain the interdependent making of the U.S. externalization regime and the Mexican containment regime. To do so, I track the rise of the border bureaucracy, locate the external and racialized sources of bureaucratic power, and explain how the bureaucracy drove the latest of U.S. imperial intrusions into Latin America and the Caribbean.

Through the Latinx Organizational Archives (LXOA) Project, I work with teams of community-based and university-based researchers to map the political and organizational ecosystems that Latinx and Latinx immigrant communities create to explain how racialized populations forge collectives to achieve their goals, amid exclusive and repressive environments across the United States.

I teach courses about the politics of migration, borders, and the state. In Spring 2025, I taught Latinos and the American Political Landscape — a research-intensive course that places Latinos at the center of questions about American political development. In Fall 2025, the theme of my APD course is: “The Violence of Path Dependence and the Power of Path-Makers.“

I come from generations of women-led migration from San Luis Potosí to Texas, and it was through the fundraising, guidance, and support from educators and members of the Lockhart, Texas community that I was able to attend Rice University as a first-generation college student.

I graduated from Lockhart High School (Lockhart, TX) in 2009. I earned my BA from Rice University (Houston, TX) in 2013. I earned my PhD from the Department of Government at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA) in 2020. I served as an Assistant Professor at Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ) from 2021 to 2024.