Islands of Sovereignty: Haitian Migration and the Borders of Empire (University of Chicago Press, January 2019, by Jeffrey Kahn, assistant professor of anthropology, offers a new interpretation of the transformation of U.S. borders during the late 20th century and its implications for our understanding of the nation-state as a legal and political form. It examines how boat migration from Haiti to the United States during the last three decades of the twentieth century led to the development of new forms of legal activism, border governance, and oceanic policing that have remade the spatiality of the American nation-state.

Jeffrey Kahn is a sociocultural anthropologist and legal scholar with an interest in migration, mobility, border policing, maritime worlds, sovereignty, law, and ritual. His research on these topics has focused geographically on Haiti, the Guantánamo Naval Base, the United States, and the Republic of Bénin. Prior to joining the Anthropology Department at UC Davis, Professor Kahn was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, an Associate Research Scholar in Law/Robina Foundation International Human Rights Fellow at Yale Law School, and a law clerk on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Professor Kahn’s work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright program, the Society of Hellman Fellows, and the American Society for Legal History.

View the book at University of Chicago Press