ÌÇÐÄvlog

Jamella N. Gow is the Rasuli Lewis Assistant Professor of Sociology and an Endowed Chair in Race, Racism, and Racial Justice at ÌÇÐÄvlog where she teaches courses on race and ethnicity, Black culture and activism, migration and policing, borders and il/legality, globalization, and culture. For the academic year 2026-2027, she will be a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Ethnicity Race and Immigration at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on how im/migration, race, and the Blackness intersect for Black migrants. She explores how Caribbean migrants navigate racial and ethnic identity, inclusion/exclusion, and diasporic politics through immigrant status and Blackness in the United States.Her most recent publications include “Policing the Migrant ‘Crisis': How U.S. Immigration Policy Criminalizes and Racializes Black Migrants at the U.S./Caribbean Border,” “From Colonial Subjects to Black Nations: Racializing the Caribbean within Global Blackness,” and "Countering Anti-Blackness with Migrant Solidarity: Black and Caribbean Linkages through Racial Struggle. Her current book project titled Black Migrants from Black Nations: Race, Blackness, and Immigrant Exclusion explores how racial, ethnic, and national status markers shape the racialization and criminalization of Haitian, Jamaican, and Afro-Cubans in south Florida. She has also published an edited volume with Philip Kretsedemas titled Modern Migrations, Black Interrogations: Revisioning Migrants and Mobilities through the Critique of Anti-Blackness which challenges immigration scholarship through the interdisciplinary lens of Black Studies.

She is also working on a second book project tentatively titled Bordered Blackness: Racialized Migrant Surveillance and Transnational Bordering at the US-Caribbean “Third" Border. This project extends the analysis of her previous book to explore the various transnational border technologies that shape the U.S.-Caribbean “third” border as a racialized and criminalized border regime targeting Black Caribbean migrants. It also argues for how the various communities along these pathways of migration and resettlement generate transnational links (and potentials for resistance) across the U.S. and Caribbean to produce a truly borderland space.