Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling

Jason De León is an American anthropologist, a professor at UCLA, and the executive director of the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP), a nonprofit that combines research, art, and education to study clandestine migration. His work, including the previous book The Land of Open Graves, is situated at the intersection of academia and public advocacy, conducted during an era of heightened border externalization and humanitarian crises. De León frames human smuggling not as a moral failing but as a form of labor shaped by state policy, violence, and economic scarcity, challenging simplistic narratives by centering the lived experiences of guides themselves.

De León’s credibility is built on years of immersive fieldwork. He employs participant observation, a major element of ethnography and an anthropological approach that centers a study’s subject’s perspective rather than outside perspectives. He describes this method as a form of “deep hanging out” (8), building rapport with smugglers in safe houses, on train tracks, and in their home communities. This long-term engagement allows him to document the complexities of the smuggling world with nuance, moving beyond the sensationalism of journalism to produce a detailed ethnographic account. 

He presents this as the most accurate and informed manner of studying these cultural phenomena in-depth; however, throughout his research in the