Pia Berghoff
International Research Training Group 'Temporalities of Future in Latin America'
Postdoctoral Fellow
Anthropology
14195 Berlin
Education
|
Since 05/2022 |
PhD Candidate, International Research Training Group ‘Temporalities of Future’, Freie Universität Berlin |
|
Since 10/2021 |
PhD Candidate at the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin (Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Stephanie Schütze) |
|
08/2018 – 12/2018 |
Exchange semester at El Colegio de México (Mexico) as part of the direct exchange program of Freie Universität, subject: Gender Studies |
|
10/2017 – 09/2021 |
Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Latin American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin |
|
08/2014 – 07/2015 |
Two exchange semesters at the Universidad de Cuyo Mendoza (Argentina) as part of the direct exchange program of Leipzig University, subjects: Political Science and Sociology |
|
10/2012 – 09/2017 |
Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences and Philosophy with core subject Political Science at Leipzig University |
|
10/2012 – 09/2017 |
Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Studies at Leipzig University |
Work Experience
|
Since 06/2026 |
Researcher (postdoc), International Research Training Group ‘Temporalities of Future’, Freie Universität Berlin |
|
05/2022 – 04/2025 |
Researcher, International Research Training Group ‘Temporalities of Future’, Freie Universität Berlin |
|
01/2022 – 12/2022 |
Part of the Research Team of the project “Humanizando la Deportación” (UC Davis and El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Tijuana) |
|
10/2021 – 04/2022 |
Independent Research Assistant with the DFG-Project "Forced Migration and Organized Violence: A Comparative Study in Europe and the Americas" (Direction: Prof. Dr. Stephanie Schütze, Freie Universität Berlin; Prof. Dr. Ludger Pries, Ruhr-Universität Bochum) |
|
04/2021 – 09/2021 |
Student Assistant at the Area of Cultural and Social Anthropology, Institute for Latin American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin (Prof. Dr. Stephanie Schütze) |
|
08/2019 – 09/2021 |
Student Assistant with the DFG-Project "Forced Migration and Organized Violence: A Comparative Study in Europe and the Americas" (Direction: Prof. Dr. Stephanie Schütze, Freie Universität Berlin; Prof. Dr. Ludger Pries, Ruhr-Universität Bochum) |
|
03/2018 – 08/2019 |
Student Assistant to the Gender Equality Officer of Freie Universität Berlin (Dr. Mechthild Koreuber) |
|
07/2016 – 08/2017 |
Student Assistant with the sub-project "Maras as Producers of translocal spaces of violence in the Americas and Europe" (Direction: Prof. Dr. Heidrun Zinecker, Leipzig University) of the Collaborative Research Center 1199 "Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition" |
Awards
| 06/2024 |
Award from the "Migrations, Displacements and Mobilities" section of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) for the article "Gendering the temporalities of transit migration: Biographical temporalities and maintenance time. The case of migrant women waiting in Tijuana, Mexico", presented at the LASA 2023 congress in Vancouver. |
PhD Project (completed in 2026): "Temporalities of transit. Migrants’ experiences with temporal discrepancies throughout their journey to the United States and at the US-Mexico border"
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Stephanie Schütze, Freie Universität Berlin
My doctoral project focuses on the situations of Mexican and Central American migrants waiting at Mexico’s northern border and examines them ethnographically in relation to other temporalities associated with migration efforts. I demonstrate that the frictions that emerge from the migratory policies attempting to control migration through the employment of waiting and hasting and the anticipated temporal course of the migrant’s projects open up an important field of research. Barber and Lem (2018) conceptualize these frictions as “temporal discrepancies” between irregularized migrants and their future-oriented migration projects, on the one hand, and migration regimes resulting from and responding to global capitalist and post-colonial power dynamics, on the other hand.
Drawing on this concept and the recent work of the “temporal turn” in migration studies, I analyze the experiences of chronic waiting and unexpected hasting of migrants temporally residing in the North Mexican border city of Tijuana due to the pandemic and post-pandemic waiting mechanisms of the US migration regime, namely, Title 42 and the obligation to use the CBP One Application. In doing so, I am especially interested in the manifold ways migrants react and adapt to, as well as resist the temporal discrepancies resulting from these waiting mechanisms in their everyday life at the border. In this context, future aspirations and anticipation are a fruitful dimension of analysis to understand both migrants’ burdensome temporal experiences during the period of waiting and their strategies of coping with the unexpected interruption of their migration endeavor. Furthermore, I point out that there is another set of tensions interconnected with those that exist between the migratory regime and the migrants’ future projects: the discrepancies between family and gender time regimes and the temporalities of migration. For this reason, I focus particularly on the perspectives of female migrants, migrants of the LGBTQ+ community and those migrants who began their migration project as a family.
The ethnographic data, on which my doctoral project is based, was constructed and collected during four fieldwork stays between January 2022 and June 2024. I employed methods like participant observation through voluntary work with a local migrant support organization, ethnographic interviews and creative workshop formats with migrant families in Tijuana.
Chapters
Berghoff, Pia/Cuéllar, Lya. (2024): Waiting as violence: The interactions of gender and waiting mechanisms in the asylum systems of the United States and Mexico. In: Alba Villalever, Ximena/Schütze, Stephanie/Pries, Ludger/Calderón Morillón, Oscar (Eds.): Forced migration across Mexico. Organized violence, migrant struggles, and life trajectories, London/New York: Routledge, pp. 183-199.
Essays
Berghoff, Pia (2025): Tres reflexiones sobre la posicionalidad y la in/movilidad en el cambiante contexto de Tijuana, México. In: Willers, Susanne (Ed.): (Trans)fronteriza no. 31 : migraciones en movimiento : nuevas realidades y desafíos en la investigación de campo, Buenos Aires: CLACSO, pp. 11-14. https://www.clacso.org/boletin-31-transfronteriza/
