Lucas Puygrenier did his PhD at the CERI under the supervision of Béatrice Hibou. His doctoral dissertation, entitled "Redundant people: Labor formation and the management of populations in Malta", showed how the boundaries between the human presences that are deemed to be legitimate and those considered to be "redundant" are continuously shifting, depending on the changing understandings of the "needs" of the economy and of the role the state is expected to play in the management of production. After being a lecturer at the University of Lille, Lucas is since 2014 a postdoctoral researcher at the EHESS (CMH) in Paris. His new research projects evolve around the 'golden visas' and 'golden passports' in Malta, investigating, in a Veblenian perspective, how the development of a foreign 'leisure class' on the island depends on the expansion of foreign working classes.

His research has been published in several venues, including la Revue européenne des migrations internationales, Theory and Society, and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. With Jeanne Bouyat and Amandine Le Bellec, Lucas also recently co-edited the book States and the Making of Others, published with Palgrave Macmillan.