Crossing the ‘Global South Frontier’: Mapping Latin American Presence in International Relations Publications

Despite increasing calls to globalise and pluralise the field, International Relations (IR) remains dominated by institutions based in the Global North. This paper engages with the theme of exclusion with access by complementing ongoing critiques of the discipline’s epistemic hierarchies by examining how Latin American scholars are represented in top-tier IR journals. While the inclusion of Global South voices has become more visible, such inclusion is often symbolic, conditional and structurally constrained. By mapping Latin American authors who published in ten prestigious IR journals from 2010 to 2024, we analyse training backgrounds, publication locations, co-authorship networks and research themes to reveal the material and epistemic barriers that shape visibility and legitimacy in IR. We conceptualise these barriers as part of a broader ‘Global South frontier’ that limits transformative participation. With its hybrid position as Westernised yet peripheral, Latin America offers a unique lens for interrogating the discipline’s persistent inequalities. This paper contributes to broader debates on knowledge production, reflexivity and structural gatekeeping inbroader debates on knowledge production, reflexivity and structural gatekeeping inIR by centering the publication process as a key site of disciplinary power.