Ioana Simina Popescu, B.A. M.A.
Ioana Simina Popescu, B.A. M.A.
PhD candidate
Contact Details
Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Vienna
NIG, 4th floor
Room: C0408
T: +43-1-4277-49516
E-Mail: ioana-simina.popescu@univie.ac.at
Research Focus Areas
- governance of migration
- labor
- border regimes
- migration industries
- racial capitalism
- social reproduction
Short Biography
Ioana Simina Popescu holds an MA degree in Sociology and Social Anthropology from Central European University and a BA in Anthropology from the University of Babeș-Bolyai. She joined the Department at the University of Vienna in December 2024.
Her MA research project examined the labor migration of people coming to Romania from South-Asian countries by mapping the emerging infrastructure that mediates this mobility. Through ethnographically grounded research, her project reveals how a cheap and precarious workforce is produced at the intersection of the migration regime and racializing imaginaries upheld by employers and recruiters.
Her doctoral dissertation continues this research to investigate how Romania’s recent incorporation into the Schengen Area is reshaping the legal framework concerning “third-country national” migrants while also influencing their placemaking and mobility strategies.