Asha Sawhney

I am a PhD Candidate completing my dissertation titled "Going South to Go North: A Multi-Sited Ethnography of Migrant Autonomy and State Control in Uruguay and the United States."

Based on 18-months of ethnographic research comprised of semi-structured interviews and participant observation in Montevideo and Chicago, along with supplementary media and document analysis, my dissertation synthesizes scholarship from global and transnational studies, the sociology of migration, Latino/a/x studies, Latin American studies, and political economic theory. I use ethnography as a method to refine theory, with the specific aim of advancing a framework that can articulate how Uruguay’s state approach of universal regularization and the United States’ promotion of mass detention and deportation exist within a connected regime of global migratory control. My previous work appears in venues such as New Political Economy and Urban Matters.

My broader research agenda spans global and transnational studies, the sociology of migration, Latin American and Latino/a/x studies, political economic theory, and social movements. Regionally, I have a background in both Latin American and South Asian Studies. Theoretically, I am especially interested in the Autonomy of Migration (AoM) perspective. 

Publications: 

Sawhney, Asha and Jose Atiles (equal co-authors),"Dispossession by Production: The Pharmaceutical Industry and Covid-19 Resource Shortages in India and Puerto Rico," New Political Economy, September 2025, https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2025.2551834. 

Sawhney, Asha, "Naanwais and Non-Citizens: The Political Economy of Afghan Migrant Infrastructures in Delhi," Urban Matters Journal, November 2023.