Jared Van Ramshorst
Assistant Professor
Fields
- Borders and Immigration
- Latina/o/x Studies
- Law and Policy
- Qualitative Methods
Education
- Ph.D., Geography, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University (2020)
- M.A., Geography, San Diego State University (2014)
- B.A., History, California State University, Fullerton (2012)
About Jared Van Ramshorst
Dr. Jared Van Ramshorst is a political geographer who specializes in borders, immigration, and Latina/o/x studies. His research focuses on immigration from Central and South America to the U.S. and the ways in which immigrants grapple with border and immigration enforcement. Using an interdisciplinary approach, he analyzes recent law and policy to explore questions around citizenship, race and ethnicity, and violence. His work appears in journals such as Geopolitics, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and Urban Geography, and he is currently writing a book about the intersections between domestic immigration enforcement and the global war on terror.
Prior to joining Cal Poly, he taught at Kean University in New Jersey and College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts. During the 2023–2024 academic year, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Graduate Center of City University of New York (CUNY).
Classes
- Introduction to International Relations
- The Politics of Race, Gender, Class, and Sexuality
- Peace and War
- Criminalizing Immigrants
- Latina/o/x Politics
Selected Publications
“The Detention Corridor: Ambiguity, Space, and Uncertainty in Immigrant Family Detention,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 51, no. 20 (2025): 5355–5372.
“From ‘Killing Deserts’ to ‘Killing Cities’: Weaponizing Urban Landscapes in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands,” Urban Geography 46, no. 4 (2025): 940–956.
“Subordinating Space: Immigration Enforcement, Hierarchy, and the Politics of Scale in Central America and Mexico,” with Margath A. Walker, Borders in Globalization Review 3, no. 2 (2022): 14–25.
“Expanding Exclusion: Migration, Asylum, and Transitional Death in Mexico and the U.S.,” in Jamie Longazel and Miranda C. Hallett (eds.), Migration and Mortality: Social Death, Dispossession, and Survival in the Americas (Temple University Press, 2021): 207–221.
“Studying Migration in the Time of Trump: Power, Positionality, and Formal Politics in the Field,” The Professional Geographer 72, no. 2 (2020): 264–271.