Maurice Rafael Magana

Maurice Rafael Magaña is an urban anthropologist and ethnic studies scholar who studies social movements, migration, bordering, and the construction of social difference. His work focuses on understanding how everyday people collectively envision and enact more just, liberatory horizons. He has worked extensively with activists and artists in the United States and Mexico and collaborated with applied research teams working with the labor movement in Honduras, South Africa, and Costa Rica. His first book, Cartographies of Youth Resistance: Hip-Hop, Punk, and Urban Autonomy in Mexico, published by University of California Press, won the Anthony Leeds Prize for outstanding book by the Critical Urban Anthropology Association. His work has also been published in Ethnic & Racial Studies, American Anthropologist, Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, American Studies, Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Anthropology, Social Justice, and Political & Legal Anthropology Review, among others.

Maurice is an Associate Editor of the Cultural Anthropology section of American Anthropologist. Before joining the faculty at the University of California, Davis, Maurice held academic appointments at the University of Arizona, the University of California, Los Angeles, and was a Fellow at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego.

Representative Publications

Books

• Cartographies of Youth Resistance: Hip-Hop, Punk, and Urban Autonomy in Mexico. University of California Press. Fall 2020

• *Winner of the Critical Urban Anthropology Association’s 2021 Anthony Leeds Book Prize. 

• Kent Wong, David Huerta, Victor Narro, Hugo Romero, and Maurice R. Magaña. Mike Garcia and the Justice for Janitors Movement. UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education. 2020.

• Translator (English to Spanish) Sueños Deportados: Jóvenes Inmigrantes y Familias Resisten Deportación. Kent Wong and Nancy Guarneros (Eds). Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education. 2016. 

• Contributing Editor with Kent Wong and Nancy Guarneros. Dreams Deported: Immigrant Youth and Families Resist Deportations. Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education. 2015. 

Peer Reviewed Articles and Chapters

• Magaña, Maurice R. 2024. “Murales y hashtags como archivos multimodales de las comunidades transfronterizas.” In Comunidades Virtuales en Las Industrias Culturales en Norteamérica. Alejandro Mercado Celis (ed). Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México-Centro de Investigaciones Sobre América del Norte (Mexico).

• Wright, Anthony, Maurice R. Magaña, and Jurhamutí José Velasquez Morales. 2024. “Methods for a multimodal, collaborative, and engaged research practice: Mapping youth activism and cultural production across time and space.” In Handbook on Youth Activism. Jerusha Conner (ed). Edward Elgar.

• Magaña, Maurice R. and Xóchitl Flores-Marcial. 2023. “Giving Form to Indigenous Futures Through Monumental Architecture, Art, and Technology.” In Indigenous Futures: a Critical Handbook on Indigenous Development. Nancy Postero, Irma Alicia Velasquez Nimatuj, Katharina Rickshtul, and John Andrew McNeish, and (eds). Routledge. 

• Magaña, Maurice R. 2022. “Multimodal Archives of Transborder Belonging: Murals, Social Media, and Racialized Geographies in Los Angeles.” American Anthropologist.

• Magaña, Maurice R. 2022 “Rebel Aesthetics: Street Art, Urban Space, and Militarization in Heritage Mexico.” Latin American & Latinx Visual Culture. Vol. 4 (4).

• Magaña, Maurice R. 2021 “The Politics of Black and Brown Solidarities: Race, Space, and Hip-Hop Cultural Production in Los Angeles.” Ethnic and Racial Studies. 

• Magaña, Maurice R. 2017. “Spaces of Resistance, Everyday Activism and Belonging: Youth Reimagining and Reconfiguring the City in Oaxaca, Mexico,” Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology. Vol. 22 (2).

• Magaña, Maurice R. 2016 “From the Barrio to the Barricades: Grafiteros, Punks and the Remapping of Urban Space.” Special double issue, “Mexican and Chicanx Social Movements,” Social Justice: Vol. 42 (3/4).

• Magaña, Maurice R. 2014. “Building Horizontal Political Cultures: Youth Activism and the Legacy of the Oaxacan Social Movement of 2006.” In Rethinking Latin American Social Movements: Radical Action from Below. Richard Stahler-Sholk, Harry E. Vanden and Marc Becker (eds.). Latin American Perspectives in the Classroom Series. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2014. 

• Magaña, Maurice R. 2010 “Analyzing the Meshwork as an Emerging Social Movement Formation: An Ethnographic Account of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO).” Journal of Contemporary Anthropology: Vol. 1 (1).  

Invited essays 

• Magaña, Maurice R. 2022. “The Ungovernability of Anarchist and Liberationist Political Imaginations” featured in the virtual issue “Ethnographic Encounters with Destituent Power and Alternative Futures.” Invited editor-reviewed essay for Political and Legal Anthropology Review’s (POLAR) Emergent Conversations series. 

• Magaña, Maurice R. 2022. “Acknowledging the Anthony Leeds Prize.” Invited editor-reviewed essay for City & Society.

• Magaña, Maurice R. 2021 “Giving Form to Black and Brown: The Art of Political Solidarity.” Invited editor-reviewed essay for American Studies Journal. 

• Magaña, Maurice R. 2020 “Archiving Transborder Communities Through Murals and Social Media.” Invited blog post for Youth Circulations: Tracing the Real and Imagined Circulations of Global Youth. October 19. 

• Magaña, Maurice R. 2020 “How to Sustain a Mass Movement? Lessons from Urban Indigenous Youth Collectives and “Decolonial Anarchism” in Mexico.” Invited blog post for the University of California Press Blog: Where Bright Minds Share Bold Ideas. October 12. 

Education, Awards and Professional Highlights

• Mellon-Fronteridades Faculty Fellowship, University of Arizona Confluencenter, Border Lab, and Mellon Foundation (2024)

• Binational Research Consortium, University of Arizona-National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) on Migration, Human Rights, and Human Security, Faculty Research Grant (2023)

• Anthony Leeds Book Prize for Cartographies of Youth Resistance, Critical Urban Anthropology Association (2021)

• Programa de Apoyo a Proyectos de Investigación E Innovación Tecnológica, CISAN-UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico). Investigator (PI- Alejandro Mercado Celis, UNAM) (2019)

• Program for Transborder Communities Research Seed Grant, Arizona State University, School for Transborder Studies, Investigator (Six-Person Team representing UA, ASU, Universidad de Sonora and Nogales, Arizona-based social workers) (2019)

• University of Arizona Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Institute, Leveraging Grant (2019)

• Confluencenter at University of Arizona, Funding to launch working group Transfrontera: Movements, Community and Identity in the Américas. Co-PI (2017)

• W.M. Keck Foundation, Research Grant (2015)

• Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Engaged Anthropology Grant (2014)

• 50 Best Cultural Anthropology Dissertations of 2013, anthropologyworks (2014)

• Ford Foundation, Dissertation Fellowship (2012)

• Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Dissertation Fieldwork Grant (2010)

• Tokyo Foundation, Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund, Fellow (2009)

• Community Award, MEChA of University of Oregon (2009)

• UCLA Institute of American Cultures and Chicano Studies Research Center, Visiting Research Scholar (2013-2014)

• University of California, San Diego Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, Visiting Fellow (2012-2013)

• PhD, Cultural Anthropology, University of Oregon, June 2013