Angie M. Bautista-Chavez

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

In my book project, Exporting Borders, I show how the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) intruded into Mexican territory, testing and refining a system of extraterritorial administration that systematically integrated Mexican federal institutions into active yet subordinate roles under U.S. federal command. By tracing DHS intrusions and situating them within the historical context of U.S. interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean, I link U.S. border externalization to developments in the American racial and imperial state. Likewise, I situate developments in the Mexican federal bureaucracy—including militarization—within transnational processes of externalization and containment. I explain the hemispheric intent and global implications of the U.S.-Mexico transnational system under which the two states jointly administer the mass transport of people from north to south.

My Fall 2026 course, “Bureaucracy and the American Landscape,” examines phases of American expansion to analyze the role and development of the bureaucracy, the growth of U.S. federal authority, and the coercive capacities of the American central state.

I co-lead the Latinx Organizational Archives (LXOA) Project—a research collective of faculty, students, and community-based leaders. In Spring 2026, the LXOA formalized a collaboration with the Latino Landscapes Project (LLP), which is co-led by two practitioners. Together, we are tracing the emergence, development, impact, and current activation of 1,300+ Latino organizations across the United States to inform accounts of Latinx political power and American democracy.

My Fall 2026 course, “Latinos and the American Landscape,” examines the dynamic interplay between the American state and Latino political capacities.

My recent publications:

• >> Read: “Hierarchy in the Politics of Migration: Revisiting Race, Ethnicity, and Power in the Migration State” in International Migration Review.
• >> Read: “Community-Based Leaders and Civically Engaged Research: Lessons from the Remaking of the Latinx Organizational Archives Project” in Politics, Groups, and Identities.
• >> Read: “The Power-Enhancing and Power-Diminishing Effects of Digital Technologies: Marginalized People and US Racial Authoritarianism” in the Annual Review of Political Science.
• >> Read: “Civically Engaged Research in Political Science: A Methodological Guide” in Politics, Groups, and Identities.

I come from a family of women from San Luis Potosí. With guidance and support from educators and members of the Lockhart, Texas, community, and through fundraising, I was able to attend Rice University as a first-generation college student. I graduated from Lockhart High School in 2009, earned my BA from Rice University in 2013, earned my PhD in Government from Harvard University in 2020, and served as an Assistant Professor at Arizona State University from 2021 to 2024.