Korbel ranked 12th best place in the world to earn a master’s degree in international relations.
Korbel ranked 20th in the world for the best undergraduate degree in international studies.
Korbel ranked 12th best place in the world to earn a master’s degree in international relations.
Korbel ranked 20th in the world for the best undergraduate degree in international studies.
Professor
Co-Director, Center for Immigration Policy and Research
Rebecca B. Galemba is a Professor of International Studies and trained as an anthropologist. She is the Co-Director of the DU Center for Immigration Policy and Research. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on Migration, Qualitative Research Methods, Cultures of Development, and Illicit Markets. Her research expertise includes migration and border studies, smuggling, informal and illicit economies, Mexico, Central America, the U.S. asylum and immigration system, climate and migration, wage theft, community engaged research, and immigrant labor rights. She also serves on the Board of Centro de los Trabajadores Colorado. At DU she is also affiliated with IRISE and CCESL.
Dr. Galemba looks for opportunities to involve students directly into community-engaged learning and research. Since 2012, she has led the DU Just Wages Project- a mixed-methods multi-year project to study immigrant day laborers' experiences with wage theft in Colorado, as well as advocates' attempts to assist workers and shift the policy climate. This project has been pursued in close coordination with community partners and over 100 Korbel students have collaborated on the project. You can learn more about the project here: https://dujustwagesproject.wordpress.com/
Since 2020, she has run the DU Courtwatch Project, an ongoing research and advocacy project on the U.S. immigration and asylum system, with a focus on Denver. More about this project here: https://ducourtwatch.wordpress.com/
Dr. Galemba is the author of two books: Contraband Corridor: Making a Living at the Mexico-Guatemala Border (Stanford University Press 2017), also published in Spanish as: La Cadena: Vida y negocio en el lÃmite entre México y Guatemala (San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, México: UNAM-CIMSUR 2021) and the award-winning Laboring for Justice: The Fight Against Wage Theft in an American City (Stanford University Press 2023), as well as additional academic articles, books chapters, blogs, and policy reports."
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Sie Center, ICRS, Scrivner Institute
International Development, International Human Rights
Galemba, Rebecca B., Sarah B. Horton, and Kristin E. Yarris. forthcoming. "Teaching in Immigration Court: Engaged anthropology, student supervision, and ethical challenges involved in observing public hearings of asylum claimants." Practicing Anthropology, in production.
Greer, Nikky, K. Jill Fleuriet, Rebecca Galemba, and Sallie Han. forthcoming "Towards an Anthropology that Cares: Lessons from the Academic Carework Project." American Anthropologist, in production.
Galemba, Rebecca B. 2024. Transit as Racialized Space: Comparing Perceptions of Refugees along the Mexico-Guatemala Border." Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, online first https://doi.org/10.1111/jlca.12741
Conclusion: Beyond Contraband." 2024. In Contraband Cultures: Reframing Smuggling Across Latin America, edited by Charles Beach and Jennifer Cearns. UCL Press, London, pp. 255-272.
Moran-Taylor, Michelle, Matthew Taylor, and Rebecca Galemba. 2024 "Migration, Livelihoods and Climate Change in the Cuchumatan Highlands of Guatemala." Volume 67. FOCUS on Geography. Vol. 67, DOI:10.21690/foge/2024.67.1f
Galemba, Rebecca Berke. 2003. Laboring for Justice: The Fight Against Wage Theft in an American City. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Bozcali, Firat and Rebecca Galemba. 2023. "Narrative: Crossing Borders." In Elgar Handbook on Forced Migration, Karen Jacobsen and Nassim Majidi, eds. Pp. 109-114.
Galemba, Rebecca. 2022. "Smugglers and the State Effect at the Mexico-Guatemala Border." In Seeing like a Smuggler: Borders from Below, Mahmoud Keshavarz and Shahram Khosravi, eds. Pluto Press, pp. 59-79.
Galemba, Rebecca and Randall Kuhn. 2021. "No Place for Old Men: Wage Theft and Immigrant Duration, among Day Laborers in Denver, Colorado." International Migration Review 55(4): 1201-1230.
Galemba, Rebecca B. 2021. "˜They Steal our Work": Wage Theft and the Criminalization of Immigrant Day Laborers in Colorado, USA." European Journal of Criminal Policy and Research 27(1): 91-112.
Galemba, Rebecca Berke. 2021. La Cadena: Vida y negocio en el limite entre México y Guatemala. Spanish translation of Contraband Corridor. San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, México: UNAM-CIMSUR/
Galemba, Rebecca B., Katie Dingeman, and Kaelyn DeVries. 2021. "Gateway to the North: Contingent Journeys at the Mexico-Guatemala Border." Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 26(1): 25-45.
Galemba, Rebecca, Abbey Vogel, and Antje Missbach. 2021. "Border controls in transit countries the their implications for migrant smuggling: a comparison of Indonesia and Mexico." United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Forum on Crime and Society, Special issue: Smuggling of Migrants 10(1-2): 51-84. https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/bulletin/2021/V2102426.pdf
Kemp, Paul; Galemba, Rebecca. 2020. "Illicit Trade and Smuggling." In Oxford Bibliographies in International Relations. Ed. Patrick James. New York: Oxford University Press.
Galemba, Rebecca, Katie Dingeman, Kaelyn DeVries, and Yvette Servin. 2019. "Paradoxes of Protection: Denouncing Migrant Abuses and Pursuing Humanitarian Relief at the Mexico-Guatemala Border." Journal on Migration & Human Security 7(3): 62-78.
Galemba, Rebecca. 2019. "Report: Coyotes from the same wolf." NACLA Report on the Americas 51(1): 49-54. In Special Issue, Beyond Borders.
Galemba, Rebecca. 2018. "He used to be a Pollero": The securitisation of migration and the smuggler/migrant nexus at the Mexico-Guatemala border." Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 44(5): 870-886
Galemba, Rebecca Berke. 2017. Contraband Corridor: Making a Living at the Mexico-Guatemala Border. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press
Galemba, Rebecca. 2015. Mexico's Border (In)security. The Postcolonialist 2(2)
Thomas, Kedron and Rebecca Galemba. 2013. "Illegal Anthropology: An Introduction." Political and Legal Anthropology Review (PoLAR) 36(2): 211-214
Galemba, Rebecca. 2013. "Illegality and Invisibility at Margins and Borders." Political and Legal Anthropology Review (PoLAR) 36(2): 274-285
Galemba, Rebecca. 2012. "Corn is Food, Not Contraband": The Right to Free Trade at the Mexico- Guatemala Border." American Ethnologist 39(4): 716-734
Galemba, Rebecca. 2012. "Remapping the Border: Taxation, Territory, and State Power at the Mexico-Guatemala Border." Journal of Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 30(5): 822-841
Galemba, Rebecca. 2012. "Taking Contraband Seriously: Practicing "Legitimate Work" at the Mexico-Guatemala Border." The Anthropology of Work Review 33(1): 3-14
Galemba, Rebecca. 2011. "Un poco legal, un poco ilegal." La vida cotidiana en un paso clandestino de la frontera México-Guatemala." En (Trans)formaciones del Estado en los Mérgenes de Latinoamérica. Imaginarios Alternativos, Aparatos Inacabados y Espacios Transnacionales, Alejandro Agudo Sanchéz y Marco Estrada Saavedra, eds. México: UIA /COLMEX, pp. 339-367
Winner, Society for the Anthropology of Work (SAW) Book Prize for Laboring for Justice, 2023
Winner, Kate M. Browne Creativity in Research Award, Society for Economic Anthropology (SEA), 2023
Finalist, Society for Economic Anthropology (SEA) Book Prize, 2023
Winner, Setha M. Low Engaged Anthropology Award, American Anthropological Association (AAA), 2022
Winner, Best Dissertation Prize, New England Council of Latin American Studies (NECLAS), 2010
Public Good Faculty of the Year Award, University of Denver, 2018
Migration (Graduate)
Qualitative Research Methods (Graduate)
Illicit Markets (Undergraduate)
Ph.D., Anthropology, Brown University, 2009
M.A., Anthropology, Brown University, 2005
B.A., Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies (minor in Spanish), Dartmouth College, 2003
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