About UsYaatsil Guevara González

Junior Professor of “Migration and the Americas”

Affiliation: Heidelberg Center for Ibero-American Studies - HCIAS
Co-operation: Faculty of Chemistry and Earth Sciences, Institute of Geography, Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA)

Tel.: +49 (0)6221 54-19326
Email: yaatsil.guevara(at)uni-heidelberg.de

Dr. Yaatsil Guevara González studied historical anthropology (Universidad Veracruzana) and regional studies (Instituto Mora) in Mexico. In 2022, she received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Bielefeld.

From 2019 until 2021, she was the coordinator of the project “Misrecognition of Minorities in Europe”, funded by the VW Foundation and based at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Conflict and Violence Research (IKG) at Bielefeld University. From 2021 until 2022, she was the coordinator of the project “African Trajectories across Central America,” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and based at the Department of Anthropology and African Studies (ifeas) at the Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz. She is a board member of the German Network for Forced Migration Studies (Netzwerk Fluchtforschung e.V.). Since April 2023, she is the Junior Professor for “Migration and the Americas” at the Heidelberg Center for Ibero-American Studies (HCIAS).

Complete CV Yaatsil Guevara González

guevara gonzalez portrait

Research

Yaatsil Guevara González is an anthropologist and an ethnographer. Through her academic training, she has worked in diverse disciplines such as area studies, sociology of migration, and anthropology of everyday life. Her research focuses on forced migration flows across the Americas. She is interested in exploring how migratory regimes affect and are echoed in the everyday lives of migrants, as well as understanding the spatial connotations of irregularized migration. In her research, she studies migratory corridors as geopolitical connectors that help to better understand the south-north interdependencies across the Americas. She also investigates the social processes happening in the ‘in-between’ of irregularized cross-border mobility. The regional focus of her work is Ibero-America, particularly Central America, Mexico, and the U.S.

Research in Progress

  • Sobreviviendo a la necropolítica del refugio: La espera como estrategia de fuga y desaliento en las personas migrantes en tránsito por México y Costa Rica (2023). This collaborative project with Carmen Fernández-Casanueva (CIESAS-Sureste, Mexico) is funded by the Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences (CALAS) as part of its “Transatlantic Tandem” program. The project is run in Mexico and Costa Rica and parts from two central assumptions: a) The asylum policy in Mexico and Costa Rica has become a necropolitical mechanism, beyond a policy to “safeguard lives,” and b) Consequently, the uncertain and prolonged conditions of waiting to which asylum seekers are suppressed have an ambivalent nature: On one hand, waiting creates platforms and strategies of flight, and, on the other hand, it generates strategies of discouragement. Activities within the framework of this research project: (online) CALAS Conference. March 21, 2023. Location: Centro de Investigaciones Históricas de América Central. Universidad de Costa Rica, San José, Costa Rica.

Recent Publications

Table

(Forthcoming) Winters, Nanneke, Heike Drotbohm, and Yaatsil Guevara González. (Un)Settling Place. Diverse and Divergent Place-Making of People on the Move, World in Motions Series, Berghahn Books, U.K.
Complete List of Publications Yaatsil Guevara

Recent Presentations and Media Contributions

Emergent Agencies in Central America Migrant Route: Exploring the Nexus Between Peace and Migration

Book presentation by Yaatsil Guevara González with Author Camila Braga and Guillerno Navarro Alvarado at the conference ¿Quién teme a la paz? Circunstancias y factores de la resistencia a la convivencia no violenta. As a co-organizer of the conference, she also moderated the discussion panel on Gender.

The event took place on August 28 - 30, 2024 at the Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Ciudad de la Investigacion, Universidad de Costa Rica.

¿En tránsito? El paso del tiempo en el corredor migratorio Colombia-Estados Unidos (2001-2023)

Digital conference: V Semana de la Investigación "México y la agenda global". October 30 - November 3, 2023.

¿!Pura Vida!?: Migrant’s passage experiences through Costa Rica

Presentation by Yaatsil Guevara González and Carmen Fernández Casanueva. XIIth REP / MAD-AAG Conference. Race, Ethnicity, and Place. October 11-13, 2023. Washington, DC.

Movilidades humanas y nuevas geografías en México y América Central

Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, Universidad de Costa Rica. August 18, 2023.

Teaching

Winter Semester 2024/2025

  • The Making of Migration Crises in Ibero-America
  • Migratory Infrastructures: Policies, Networks and Humanitarianism
  • HCIAS Master's Degree Lecture Series: Approaches, Methods, and Resources in Ibero-American Studies | HCIAS Wednesday Colloquium

HCIAS Course Catalog Winter Semester 2024/2025

Contact

Jun.-Prof. Dr. Yaatsil Guevara

Heidelberg Center for Ibero-American Studies | HCIAS
Brunnengasse 1, 69117 Heidelberg

Tel.: +49 (0)6221 54-19326
Email: yaatsil.guevara(at)uni-heidelberg.de

Visiting address: 
Brunnengasse 1, 69117 Heidelberg
Room 107 (3012.01.107)

Office Hours

Tuesdays 12:30 - 1:30pm
(by appointment only)