Article begins
©Charlotte Hollands
Jason De León is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan where he directs the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP). De León’s research investigates the brutal world of clandestine border crossings between Mexico and the US, and he is currently documenting the lives of Honduran smugglers living in Mexico. His work sits at the intersection of ethnographic, visual, archaeological, and forensic approaches to understanding social processes. De León won the 2016 Margaret Mead Award from the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology for his book The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail featuring photos by Michael Wells.