Austin Kocher

Austin Kocher is a research assistant professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. As a political and legal geographer, Kocher’s research focuses on the politics and policies of the U.S. immigration and refugee system, including the geographies of federal, state and local immigrant policing; immigrant detention and deportation; and the role of immigration in accelerating political polarization. This work is grounded in over a decade of qualitative and quantitative research on immigration and border enforcement across the country, including the U.S. South, the Midwest and the U.S.-Mexico border region. Kocher’s work also seeks to inform the national discourse on immigration through public scholarship, engagement with policy makers and the media, and working with non-profit organizations in the Washington, D.C. area.

He also has a faculty appointment in Syracuse University’s Department of Geography, an affiliated expert at the Institute for Democracy, Journalism, and Citizenship, and he is a research fellow at the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies (CLALS) at American University. Kocher completed his Ph.D. in geography at the Ohio State University. He has taught courses in immigration and geography at George Washington University, Syracuse University and University of Michigan.

Recent publications include:

Jones, R., Kocher, A., Sultana, F., Smiles, D., McSweeney, K., & Molnar, P. (2023). “Interventions on public geographies.” Political Geography. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2023.103007. 

Davidson, L., Hlass, L., & Kocher. A. (2023). “The Double Abandonment of Immigrant Youth: How the Special Immigrant Juvenile Status Program Harms Those It Was Designed to Protect.” Georgetown Law Review. 111/6, s1407-1493. 

Kocher, A. (2023). “Glitches in the Digitization of Asylum: How CBP One Turns Migrants’ Smartphones into Mobile Borders” Societies, 13 (149). https://doi.org/10.3390/soc13060149. 

Leigh Goffe, T., Gleeson, S., Khan, A., Kocher, A., Washington, C., Salcido, J., Phansalkar, R., Persadie, R., Jackson, A., Iralu, E., Violet Lee, E., Abushama, H., Elamin, N., Tawil, R., Sosa-Riddell, C., Arrizón-Palomera, E., Moore, K., Macklin Camel, L., Bernal Ramirez, M., Morales, N., Pinheiro, A., Ozaki, A., Nascimento, A., Roberts, C., Daz, E., & Gillam, R. (2022). “The World We Became: Map Quest 2350, A Speculative Atlas Beyond Climate Crisis.” Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas, 7, 5-51. https://doi.org/10.1163/23523085-07010002

Kocher, A. (2022). ‘Studying Up’ the FOIA State (in Symposium on Margaret Kwoka's "Saving the Freedom of Information Act”). Yale Journal on Regulation. https://www.yalejreg.com/nc/symposium-saving-foia-08/

Kocher, A. (2022). Welcoming the stranger in Trump’s America: Notes on the everyday processes of constructing and enduring sanctuary. Hospitality & Society, 12(2), 165-183. https://doi.org/10.1386/hosp_00050_1

Putnam Hart, J., & Kocher, A. (2022). Impacts of Teaching Critical Race Theory and Applying Contact Theory Methods to Student’s Cross-Cultural Competency in Diversity Courses. Teaching Sociology.

Kocher, A. (2021). Migrant Protection Protocols and the Death of Asylum. Journal of Latin American Geography, 20(1), 249-258.

Sperling, R., & Kocher, A. (2021). Lawsuit Claims LIBRE BY NEXUS ‘Cheats Immigrants,’ But Will Biden Administration Address Roots of Problem? Latino Rebels. https://www.latinorebels.com/2021/02/25/lawsuitlibrebynexus/

Unger, A.-T., & Kocher, A. (2021). Migrant Protection Protocols Along U.S.-Mexico Border Come to an End, but the Assault on Asylum Continues. Border Criminologies. https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/blog/2021/03/migrant

Kocher, A. (2021). Will 'protected areas' really be safe from immigration enforcement? Probably not. The Hill. https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/580530-will-protected-areas-really-be-safe-from-immigration-enforcement-probably

Kocher, A. (2021). Biden ends policy forcing asylum-seekers to ‘remain in Mexico’ – but for 41,247 migrants, it’s too late. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/biden-ends-policy-forcing-asylum-seekers-to-remain-in-mexico-but-for-41-247-migrants-its-too-late-156622

Kocher, A. (2021). Court of Injustice: Law without Recognition in U.S. Immigration. Contemporary Sociology, 50(6), 507-509. https://doi.org/10.1177/00943061211050046r

Kocher, A., & Stuesse, A. (2020). Undocumented Activism and Minor Politics: Inside the Cramped Political Spaces of Deportation Defense Campaigns. Antipode. 

Kocher, A. (2020). Book Review: Legal Passing: Navigating Undocumented Life and Local Immigration Law. International Migration Review, 54, 1283–1285. https://doi.org/10.1177/0197918320915693

Kocher, A. (2020). Challenging State Narratives about Immigrant Criminality. Border Criminologies. https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/blog/2020/05/challenging-state

Kocher, A. (2020). ICE Filed Over 100,000 New Cases and Clogged the Courts at the Peak of the Pandemic. Documented. https://documentedny.com/2020/09/16/ice-filed-over-100000-new-cases-and-clogged-the-courts-in-the-peak-of-the-pandemic/

Kocher, A. (2020, December 3, 2020). The swamp that needs draining now: It’s the immigration backlog ICE created through indiscriminate deportations. New York Daily News. https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-the-swamp-that-needs-draining-now-20201203-uji2d6slkja3jfmho2ldafg7nq-story.html

Kocher, A. (2020, October 26, 2020). What's behind Trump's project to defund 'anarchist jurisdictions?'. The Hill. https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/522748-whats-behind-trumps-project-to-defund-anarchist-jurisdictions

Coleman, M., & Kocher, A. (2019). Rethinking the “Gold Standard” of Racial Profiling: §287(g), Secure Communities and Racially Discrepant Police Power. American Behavioral Scientist, 63(9).

Kocher, A. (2018a). Blurring the Border: Immigration Enforcement and Solidarity in Ohio. The Public Eye, Summer 2018. https://politicalresearch.org/2018/08/13/blurring-border

Kocher, A. (2018). Book Review: Terrorizing Latina/o Immigrants: Race, Gender, and Immigration Policy Post-9/11. International Migration Review, 50(2), e19-e20. https://doi.org/10.1111/imre.12284

Kocher, A. (2018). Greasing the Deportation Machine: US Immigration Courts under Trump. Borderline Criminologies. https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/blog/2018/03/greasing

Kocher, A. (2018). Immigration Courts, Judicial Acceleration, and the Intensification of Immigration Enforcement in the First Year of the Trump Administration. In J. Kowalski (Ed.), Reading Trump: A Parallax View on the US Presidency. Palgrave.

Burridge, A., Gill, N., Kocher, A., & Martin, L. (2017). Polymorphic Borders. Territory, Politics, Governance, 5(3), 1-13.

Kocher, A. (2017). Book Review: Carceral Geographies: Spaces and Practices of Incarceration by Dominique Moran. The Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe canadien, 61(1), e17-e18. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cag.12346

Kocher, A. (2017). The New Resistance: Immigrant Rights Organizing in an Era of Trump. Journal of Latin American Geography, 16(2), 165-171.

Kocher, A. (2017). Trump and Immigration Enforcement: The First 100 Days. Society & Space.

Kocher, A. (2016). Book Review Precarious Worlds: Contested Geographies of Social Reproduction by Katie Meehan and Kendra Strauss. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2015. Historical Geography, 44, 173-174.

Ahlqvist, O., Loffing, T., Ramanathan, J., & Kocher, A. (2012). Geospatial Human-environment Simulation through Integration of Massive Multiplayer Online Games and Geographic Information Systems. Transactions in GIS, 16(3), 331-350.

Coleman, M., & Kocher, A. (2011). Detention, Deportation, Devolution and Immigrant Incapacitation in the U.S., Post 9/11. Geographical Journal, 177(3), 228-237.