About this episode

Gabriella Soto discusses her book on the implications of migrant deaths at the U.S.-Mexico border and the politics surrounding forensic investigations.

Border Afterlives: Migrant Deaths, Forensic Investigations, and the Politics of Haunting (University of Arizona Press, 2026) begins with the undocumented individuals who die crossing the U.S.-Mexico border—deaths that are both preventable and politically produced. Moving between the practical and the philosophical, forensic anthropologist and author Gabriella Soto asks what it means to care for the dead and what society owes to those who die in its name. Through the lens of haunting, she explores how the dead continue to shape the living, not as objects of horror but as moral agents whose presence demands justice. Centered primarily in Arizona and South Texas, Border Afterlives offers a border-scale comparative account of forensic practices, critiques the limits of “best practices” in under-resourced systems, and calls for a re-imagining of forensic humanitarianism grounded in reciprocity and dignity, beyond human rights. This is a book that insists on remembering the dead. In this conversation, we discuss the difficult interplay between federal immigration policy and local practices of death care on the border, the implications of policies…

People in this episode

Guest: Gabriella Soto

Topics covered

• migrant deaths
• forensic investigations
• politics of haunting
• immigration policy
• humanitarianism
• social justice

Keywords

• migrant deaths
• forensic anthropology
• border politics
• humanitarian immigration reform
• social issues
• death care practices

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Arizona Press

Places: U.S.-Mexico border, Arizona, South Texas

More episodes of New Books in Mexican Studies

• Mary E. Mendoza, "Deadly Divide: How Insects, Pathogens, and People Defied the US-Mexico Border" (UNC Press, 2026) · July 11, 2026 · 54 min

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