Dr. 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.

Sara Bellezza is a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of Social and Cultural Anthropology and a research associate at the Viadrina Center B/ORDERS IN MOTION at European University Viadrina. She holds a PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology from Freie Universität Berlin. Her dissertation is entitled *Projecting Accountability, Denouncing Border Violence: Legal Counter-Practices in and Beyond the Mexico–US Borderlands*. As a legal anthropologist and scholar in the field of critical border studies, she has conducted ethnographic research into border policies in the Mexico–US border region, examining the denial of asylum rights and its link to border violence, as well as efforts to challenge these through accountability politics and litigation. Her current research focuses on the technologisation of global border control mechanisms and the resistance they provoke. She is currently developing a project on ‘Travelling Confinement Technologies and Counter-Resistance’. She has been part of the No Border Movement in Europe and is a member of borderline-europe: Human Rights Without Borders.

Academic and professional activities

Since September 2026

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

April 2026 – September 2026

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

April 2023

Visiting scholar at the Institute for Political and Legal Anthropology, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina

2015–2022

Research and project coordination at borderline-europe: Menschenrechte ohne Grenzen e.V.

September 2021 – April 2022

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

Academic career

April 2020 – July 2026

PhD at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Latin American Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology, supervised by Prof. Dr Stephanie Schütze and Prof. Dr María Dolores París Pombo. Funded by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

Thesis title: Projecting Accountability, Denouncing Border Violence: Legal Counter Practices in and beyond the Mexico-US Borderlands (summa cum laude)

October 2015 – September 2019

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

January 2017 – July 2017

Visiting student (postgraduate programme), University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica

October 2011 – September 2015

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