Pauline White Meeusen

I am a socio-legal scholar of U.S. immigration law and policy, law and social movements, and the legal profession. I study how legal actors understand their direct legal services work with asylum seekers and how legal ethics shapes lawyering in legally liminal spaces like the U.S.-Mexico border and inside detention centers. I am also interested in how newly arriving asylum seekers understand and draw upon law, whether U.S. law, the laws of their country of origin, or the laws of counties through which they have traversed, in asserting rights against the state. Another strand of my research empirically tests whether and how racial and gender bias impact human trafficking victim identification. My theoretical and methodological approach is informed by my interdisciplinary doctoral training in the social sciences and legal training as a Juris Doctor with a certificate in international law.