Sara Bellezza

•       Forced Migration and border deterrence and border governance
•       State discretion in border governance and legal regimes
•       Technologization and datafication of deterrence and confinement
•       Traveling technologies
•       Social Movements and resistance to migration control
•       Accountability and International Criminal Law
•       EUropean and Mexico-U.S. border regimes
•       Ethnographies of bureaucracies and law
•       Participatory and activist research

Selected Publications

Bellezza, S. (2027a). From Pre-Clearance to Self-Deportation at the Mexico-U.S. Border: How the CBP One App’s Function Creep Reconfigured the Techno-Humanitarian Border. Movements. Journal for Critical Migration and Border Regime Studies, (forthcoming)

Bellezza, S. (2027b). Illegal Policies or “Illegal” People? Truth and Evidence in the Courts under the Trump administration. Focaal. Journal for Global and Historical Anthropology. Submitted as part of a special issue on Brokering evidence: Truth claims and (Non)citizens’ Quests for Rights, eds. Flávio Eiró, Sophie Andreetta, and Jill Alpes (under review)

Pereira, A., & Bellezza, S. (2026). Technologies on the Move. In S. Pollozek, K. Leurs, S. Perret, P. Seuferling, A. Fill, A. Meloni, V. Nagy, & Z. Uhde (Eds.), Migration Data Matters: A Keyword Approach to the Datafication of Migration and Border Control. Liverpool University Press, (forthcoming)

Bellezza, S., & Sadik, H. (2021). Humanitarian Engagement in Maritime Rescue and Migrants’ Relocation. In G. Bevilaqua (Ed.), Human Security in Navigable Spaces: Common Challenges and New Trends. Editoriale Scientifica

Monograph

Bellezza, S., Calandrino, T., Küffner, C., Borghi, L., Biondo, A., Gleitze, J., & Maniatis, G. (2017). Criminalization of Flight and Escape Aid (S. Bellezza, T. Calandrino, & Borderline-Europe - Menschenrechte ohne Grenzen e.V, Eds.). Tredition.

To the list of publications

Academic and Professional Activities

Since September 2026

Postdoctoral research associate at the Chair of Comparative Cultural and Social Anthropology at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)

April 2026- September 2026

Postdoctoral Fellow at the European New School of Digital Studies at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)

April 2023

Teaching visit at the Center for Political and Legal Anthropology, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina

2015- 2022

Research and project coordination at borderline-europe: Human Rights Without Borders e. V.

September 2021 – April 2022

Visiting researcher at the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California San Diego

Academic Background

April 2020 – July 2026

Doctoral research at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Latin American Studies/ Social and Cultural Anthropology, supervised by Prof. Dr. Stephanie Schütze and Prof. Dr. María Dolores París Pombo, funded by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation

Title of the dissertation: Projecting Accountability, Denouncing Border Violence: Legal Counter Practices in and beyond the Mexico-U.S. Borderlands (summa cum laude)

October 2015 – September 2019

Master of Arts, Interdisciplinary Latin American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin

January 2017- July 2017

Visiting graduate student, University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica

October 2011 – September 2015

Bachelor of Arts, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Latin American Studies, Italian Studies at Freie Universität Berlin