Much of my work examines states’ asylum policies and the rights they grant refugees. A second research program deals with individual attitudes towards refugees. My newest project will examine what constitutes a refugee crisis, how the designation of a situation as a refugee crisis shapes the behavior of state and nonstate actors, and what the consequences are for refugees themselves. Across these three themes (refugee policies and rights, individual attitudes towards refugees, and global refugee crises), I draw on a variety of methodological approaches and types of empirical evidence to make compelling theoretical arguments.
Peer-Reviewed Articles
- “`The Greatest and Most Important Human Right’: Citizenship and Bureaucratic Indifference in Refugee-UNHCR Correspondence,” Migration Politics 3, no. 1 (2024): 1-27.
- “Misperceptions about Refugee Policy” with Emily Thorson, American Political Science Review 117, no. 3 (2023): 1123-1129.
- “Attitudes about Refugees and Immigrants Arriving in the United States: A Conjoint Experiment” with Liza G. Steele and Nga Than, Ethnic and Racial Studies 46, no. 10 (2023): 2163-2191.
- “Do Rights Violations Deter Refugees?” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 49, no. 1 (2023): 110-133.
- “Measuring Ethnic Diversity” with Liza G. Steele, Amie Bostic, and Scott M. Lynch, Annual Review of Sociology 48 (2022): 43–63.
- “The Politics of the Migrant/Refugee Binary: Introduction to Special Issue” with Rebecca Hamlin, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 20, no. 2 (2022): 233-239.
- “Explaining Attitudes toward Refugees and Immigrants in Europe” with Liza G. Steele, Political Studies 70, no. 1 (2022): 110-130.
- “Rivalry, Ethnicity, and Asylum Admissions Worldwide,” International Interactions 47, no. 2 (2021): 346-373.
- “The Relationship Between Human Rights and Refugee Protection: An Empirical Analysis,” International Journal of Human Rights 25, no. 10 (2021): 1704-1723.
- “Refugees and Guesthood in Turkey,” Journal of Refugee Studies 34, no. 3 (2021): 2827–2848.
- “Ethnic Diversity and Attitudes towards Refugees” with Liza G. Steele, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 45, no. 11 (2019): 1833-1856.
Working Papers
- “The Effect of Economic, Legal, and Moral Arguments on Attitudes toward Refugees,” with Scott Blinder and Rebecca Hamlin (under review)
- “Liberal Refugee Policies and Political Violence,” with Christopher W. Blair and Burcu Savun
- “Democratization and Attitudes towards Immigrants in the Middle East and North Africa” with Bess Davis
- “Assessing Refugee Rights: New Data and Analysis” with Rebecca Cordell and Idean Salehyan
- “Conceptualizing and Measuring Refugee Crises”
Other Writing
- “European Countries Are Welcoming Ukrainian Refugees. It Was a Different Story in 2015.” The Washington Post: Monkey Cage, 23 Mar. 2022.
- “Forced Migration and Refugee Flows” with Rebecca Hamlin, pp. 85-104 in Introduction to International Migration: Population Movements in the 21st Century, edited by Jeannette Money and Sarah P. Lockhart (Routledge, 2021).
- “Refugee Status Determination by UNHCR: Difficulties and Dilemmas,” Forced Migration Review 65 (2020): 21-23.
- “Explaining State Responses to Refugees,” Migration and Citizenship: Newsletter of the American Political Science Association Organized Section on Migration and Citizenship 4, no. 2 (2016): 33-38.
- “‘Migrants’ or ‘Refugees’? Its the Wrong Question,” with Rebecca Hamlin, The Washington Post: Monkey Cage, 23 Oct. 2015.
- Review of Refugees in International Relations, edited by Alexander Betts and Gil Loescher, Journal of Politics 74, no. 1 (2012).