James (Jay) G. Johnson

My interdisciplinary research and teaching focus on legal borders, human mobility, and social inequalities.  Specifically, I analyze interaction across urban politics, civil society actors, and policy institutions concerning migration governance and social inequalities in cities in global comparative perspective. In particular, I am interested in how urban law and politics intersect with international and national institutions to shape migration policies and practices, and how these governance processes are embedded in broader histories and dynamics of social and spatial borders in cities.

Previously, I was a Lecturer in Urban Studies at Yale-NUS, Singapore, and Visiting Research Fellow with the Urban School at Sciences Po, Paris. Additionally, I was a Joint Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (MPI-MMG), Germany. I received my PhD from the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and was a fellow with the Academy for African Urban Diversity (AAUD) and Visiting Research Fellow with the Scalabrini Institute for Human Migration in Africa (SIHMA), Cape Town. My research has been funded by various grants including US Fulbright Student and Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) fellowships and published in Racial and Ethnic Studies, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies.

I also hold an MA in Sociology from UCLA; MA by Research in Forced Migration Studies from the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS), University of the Witwatersrand; MSc in Global Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE); and a BA in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.

Recent publication: Johnson, J. (Jay) G. (2025). Urban aesthetics, nuisance, and refugees: local business litigation and urban law in South African cities. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2025.2558977