Mathew Coleman

Assistant Professor

Department of Geography

Ohio State University

1156 Derby Hall,

154 N. Oval Mall,

Department of Geography,

Ohio State University,

Columbus OH 43210-1361

Office Phone: (614) 292 9686

Fax: (614) 292 6213

Email: coleman.373@osu.edu

 

I completed my BA in Political Science at the Department of Political Studies at l'Université d'Ottawa and my MA in Political Economy at the Institute of Political Economy at Carleton University. I finished my PhD in the Department of Geography at UCLA in 2005.

I am currently a Fellow at OSU's Center for Interdisciplinary Law and Policy Studies and Secretary-Treasurer for the Association of American Geographer's Political Geography Specialty Group.

 

As a political geographer I am interested in how the contingencies and specificities of territory, place, and space shape what we can say about the exercise of state power.

 

My work examines the persistence of states in the world economy, as well as the ongoing importance of statecraft to world geopolitics. However, whereas much scholarship approaches statecraft as an abstract and relatively coherent act of territoriality (i.e. way of viewing and then organizing space), my interest lies with it as 1) a polyvalent bundle of sometimes countervailing projects with different institutional trajectories, 2) a multi-scalar practice which implicates any number of everyday spaces and practices, typically neglected in macro-scale analyses of the state and 3) a series of dispersed practices which play out unevenly across space and which produce places differently.

 

My current research and teaching interests are twofold. On the one hand, I am doing a lot of research on undocumented migration. Topics include:

 

The devolution of immigration policing to non-federal law enforcement agencies

Secure Communities and 287(g) in the US South

Racial profiling

The merger of criminal law enforcement and civil immigration enforcement

(Dis)continuities of US immigration enforcement pre- and post- 9/11

 Detention and deportation practice in the US since the Chinese Exclusion Acts

The politics of immigration law reform

Operation Global Reach

 US-Mexico and US-Canada relations regarding immigration enforcement

 

In addition to my research on undocumented migration, I am interested in more theoretically minded questions about power and space, oriented toward the critical geopolitics and law and geography literatures. Topics include:

 

 Law, “states of exception” and the war on terror

 Theories of geopolitics, critical geopolitics

Genealogy

 Border studies

 Biopolitics

 Theories of empire

 

Selected publications

Coleman, M. (2009) What Counts as Geopolitics, and Where?  Devolution and the Securitization of Immigration After 9/11. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 99 (December).

w/ Grove, K. (2009) Biopolitics, Biopower and the Return of Sovereignty. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 27(3), pp. 489-507.

Coleman, M. (2009). Sovereignty. In R. Kitchin & N. Thrift (eds.) International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (London: Elsevier).

Coleman, M. (2008). Deserting Sovereignty? The Securitization of Undocumented Migration in the US. In F. Debrix and M. Lacy Geopolitics of American Insecurity: Terror, Power and Foreign Policy (London: Routledge), pp. 107-125.

Coleman, M. (2008). US Immigration Law and its Geographies of Social Control: Lessons from Homosexual Exclusion during the Cold War. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26(6), pp. 1096-1114.

w/ Thomas, M. (2008). The Power and Performativity of Bush’s Mug. Antipode 41(1), pp. 15-21.

Coleman, M. (2008). Immigratio=Criminale: L’Equazione Che Non Funziona. Limes – Rivista Italiana di Geopolitica 6, pp. 169-178.

Coleman, M. (2008). Between Public and Foreign Policy: US Immigration Law Reform and the Undocumented Migrant. Urban Geography 29(1), pp. 4-28.

Coleman, M. (2008). Power and Space in the Colonial Present. Political Geography 27(3), pp. 354-359.

w/ Agnew, J. A. (2007). The Problem with Empire. In J. Crampton & S. Elden (eds.) Space, Knowledge and Power – Foucault and Geography (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate), pp.317-340.

Coleman, M. (2007). Review Essay (3 000 words). Agamben G State of Exception (Chicago, University of Chicago Press). Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 27(1), pp. 187-190.

Coleman, M. (2007). A Geopolitics of Engagement: Neoliberalism and the War on Terrorism at the Mexico-US Border. Geopolitics 12 (4), pp. 607-634.

Coleman, M. (2007). Immigration Geopolitics Beyond the Mexico-US Border. Antipode 38(1), pp. 54-76.

Coleman, M. (2005). Permeable Borders and Boundaries in a Globalizing World: Feeling at Home Amidst Global Poverty. In H. N. Nicol & I. Townsend-Gault (eds.) Holding the Line – Borders in a Global World (Vancouver, Canada: University of British Columbia Press), pp. 293-207.

Coleman, M. (2005). US Statecraft and the US-Mexico Border as Security/ Economy Nexus.  Political Geography 24(2), pp. 185-209.

Coleman, M. (2004). Geopolitics as a Social Movement: The Causal Primacy of Ideas? Geopolitics 9(2), pp. 484-491.

Coleman, M. (2003). The Naming of Terrorism and Evil Outlaws: Geopolitical Place-Making After 11 September. Geopolitics 8(2), pp. 87-104.

Coleman, M. (2002). Thinking About the World Bank’s ‘Accordion’ Geography of Financial Globalization. Political Geography 21(4), pp. 495-524.