Miguel A. Avalos (he/they) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). His research agenda centers on the question: "How do marginalized populations navigate structural and everyday state violence in borderlands?” Miguel’s dissertation explores how Latine/x transborder commuters navigate racialized immigration enforcement at U.S. ports of entry in the San Diego-Tijuana border region. Additionally, he examines Latine/x transborder commuters' home-making practices and sense of belonging in the highly politicized U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Miguel’s article, “Temporal Sequestration and Border Regimes,” published in The Sociological Review (2021/2), received the 2021 Beslow Graduate Paper Award from UIUC’s Department of Sociology. His work has been published in mobilities and has a forthcoming article due to be published in GLQ. Miguel's research has been supported by various competitive departmental and campus-wide fellowships, including the Humanities Research Institute’s Graduate Student Fellowship (2023-24) and the Graduate College’s Dissertation Completion Fellowship (2024-25). Along with the latter fellowship, he was one of only two Illinois graduate students across campus to receive the Scott Award, a special designation signaling an endowed fellowship supporting top-ranked graduate students in completing their dissertations.

Research Interests: Global and transnational sociology, sociology of race and ethnicity, sociology of time, Latinx/e sociology, queer studies, critical border studies.

Dissertation Title: “Limitrophic Dwelling: Home, Temporal Sequestration, and the U.S.-Mexico Border Regime”

Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Ghassan Moussawi (Sociology & Gender and Women's Studies)

Dissertation Committee: Dr. Brian Dill (Sociology); Dr. Anna-Maria Marshall (Sociology); Dr. Damian Vergara Bracamontes (Gender and Women's Studies); Dr. Martin Manalansan IV (Rutgers University, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies)