BOOK PROJECTS
Rejecting Our Own: the Politics of Migrant Exclusion by Coethnic Citizens.
The substantial body of scholarship on factors that affect how migrants are received by host countries and communities focuses almost exclusively on majority White citizens in the Global North and their (negative) attitudes. The presumption of these studies is that in many regions of the Global South where there is a high degree of coethnicity between migrants and host citizens, migrants will be received warmly because of those coethnic ties. Rejecting Our Own challenges this presumption by identifying and explaining cases of migrant rejection by coethnic hosts. This book argues that when host states segregate and stigmatize migrants as dangerous, coethnic citizens, who are often minoritized and marginalized within their own country, will seek to distance themselves. They can emphasize their national identity, deny shared connections, and support anti-migrant policies. Deploying a multi-method approach, this study draws on original interviews, surveys (with over 11,000 respondents), and georeferenced administrative data on refugees and host communities spanning several Global South contexts, but with a focus on East Africa. This research shows that the responses of co-ethnics to new migrants are survival strategies to battle the very real prospect that they may be mistaken for migrants and discriminated against. The findings have clear implications for how we think about the politics of intergroup relations, the contextual nature of identity, and the spillover effects of discriminatory migration policies. Ultimately, this book speaks to a universal psychological concept: fear of exclusion and marginalization.
Photos of Nyarugusu Refugee Camp in northwest Tanzania and the local Immigration Office
This research is funded by the National Science Foundation, the CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars Program, and the SSHRC Insight Development Grant.
Chapters presented at MPSA 2017, APSA 2017, Immigration Policy Lab at Stanford University, PolMeth XXXV, APSA 2018, CAPERS Fall 2018, African Studies Association 2019, Comparative Politics Seminar at Columbia University, University of Pittsburgh Human Rights and Migration Seminar, Ryerson University Behavioral Political Economy Seminar, Princeton LISD and IPERG-UB Workshop on Nationalism at the University of Barcelona.
Dignity and the Decision to Migrate, Where to Move, and When to Return (with Margaret Peters).
Worldwide, large-scale conflicts and other situations of economic and environmental insecurity have led to unprecedented numbers of people migrating across international borders. Yet, many people experiencing the same crises choose to stay within their country of origin. This project seeks to understand how individuals in these insecure situations make decisions whether to migrate, where to settle if they decide to leave, and when to return home.
Existing scholarship focuses largely on how economic and security factors shape these decisions. We argue that civilians in forced migration situations seek to restore a sense of dignity. These individuals have often lost the normalcy that gives them dignity: their homes, their jobs and professional status, their ability to take care of themselves and their families, their communities and nation.
We examine how these values affect migration decisions within several different forced displacement crises, including the Syrian Civil War, the economic collapse of Venezuela, and the gang and domestic violence fueled migration out of Central America. Spanning multiple disciplines and across the sub-fields of political science, this research furthers understanding of how political dynamics shape individuals’ values and consequently, their migration decisions.
This research is funded by the National Science Foundation.
PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS
When Pandemic Threat Does Not Stoke Xenophobia: Evidence from a Panel Survey around COVID-19 (with Daniel Rojas and Margaret Peters). Politics, Groups, and Identities (Sept 2024).
Studies have found that pandemics can heighten xenophobia among host citizens, often explained by the behavioral immune system theory or elite-driven scapegoating. However, most research has overlooked the role of pandemic-related economic restrictions and job loss on sentiment toward immigrants. To isolate this economic mechanism, we examine the case of Venezuelan migrants in Colombia before and during COVID-19. Despite the Colombian government’s severe economic lockdown, few politicians blamed Venezuelans for the pandemic. Thus, any economic impact on xenophobia should be evident. Using a panel experimental survey of 374 Colombians, supplemented with 550 new respondents at endline, we find no evidence that exposure to COVID-19 changed attitudes towards Venezuelans, even for those directly affected by the pandemic. Yet, those who did not lose their jobs viewed Venezuelan migration more positively at endline, providing support for the economic effects of pandemics.
Survey respondents' experiences with COVID-19 (top), and the proportion of respondents who agree with the migration statements at endline in February 2021 (bottom).
Presented at the UBC Comparative-Canadian Workshop and APSA 2022.
Links: Paper | Supplementary Materials | Replication Materials | Pre-Analysis Plan | Slides
Left Out: How Political Ideology Affects Support for Migrants in Colombia (with Alisha Holland and Margaret Peters). Journal of Politics (June 2024).
Do perceived political views of migrants affect their treatment? For existing studies of migrant reception largely conducted in the Global North, the overlap between ethnicity and partisanship has made it difficult to disentangle political fears from other status and identity concerns. We leverage a case in which migrants come from a similar ethno-linguistic background to explore the role of political fears. Drawing on an original face-to-face survey with over 1,000 Colombians and 1,600 Venezuelans in Colombia, we find that Colombians view Venezuelan migrants as left-wing even though actual Venezuelan migrants are more right-wing than their Colombian hosts. These political misperceptions are consequential: we find that Colombians strongly oppose the settlement of left-wing migrants in their communities. Our research implies that societies can construct out-groups along political lines when the ethnic and cultural bases for migrant exclusion are weaker.
Conjoint results for Colombian and Venezuelan survey respondents highlighting partisanship preferences for migrant profiles. Locations of respondents in Cali and Cúcuta.
Presented at APSA 2020, Global Research in International Political Economy (GRIPE), UCLA Center for the Study of International Migration.
Links: Paper | Supplementary Materials | Replication Materials | Pre-Analysis Plan | Slides
Prolonged Contact Does Not Reshape Locals’ Attitudes toward Migrants in Wartime Settings (with Jason Lyall). American Journal of Political Science (April 2024).
Despite record numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs) globally, we know little about the causal effects of intergroup contact between migrants and locals in active conflict settings. We conduct a randomized controlled trial of a vocational skills-training program implemented by Mercy Corps that enrolled 2,597 locals and migrants in near equal numbers in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where IDPs face daily prejudice and discrimination. Courses lasting up to six months emphasized collaborative learning and soft skills development. We surveyed participants at endline and followed up eight months later. While the program provided the most sustained duration of intergroup contact (360–720 hours) experimentally evaluated to date, we find no evidence of reported behavioral or attitudinal change by locals (N=1,276) toward migrants generally, regardless of classroom demographics or course duration. Our findings suggest that prolonged contact through vocational training programs is insufficient to improve relations in conflict settings.
Null effects of social contact through vocational training classes on locals' relations with migrants. Subgroup effects by course duration (blue) and composition (red).
Presented at APSA 2020, UBC Centre for Migration Studies, UPenn Perry World House Seminar, Texas A&M Bush School of Government and Public Service, PRIO Peace Research Speakers Series, World Bank-UNHCR JDC Research Conference on Forced Displacement, University of Washington International Security Colloquium, EGAP Priority Themes Seminar Series, Center for Conflict and Violence Prevention at USAID.
Links: Paper | Supplementary Materials | Replication Materials | Pre-Analysis Plan | Slides | Media: EGAP Priority Theme Brief, Dartmouth News
Inclusive Refugee-Hosting can Improve Local Development and Prevent Public Backlash (with Guy Grossman and Shuning Ge). World Development, Volume: 166, 106203 (June 2023).
Large arrivals of refugees raise concerns about potential tensions with host communities, particularly if refugees are viewed as an out-group competing for limited material resources and crowding out public services. To address these concerns, calls have increased to allocate humanitarian aid in ways that also benefit host communities. This study tests whether the increased presence of refugees, when coupled with humanitarian aid, improves public service delivery for host communities and dampens potential social conflict. We study this question in Uganda, one of the largest and most inclusive refugee-hosting countries. The data combines geospatial information on refugee settlements with original longitudinal data on primary and secondary schools, road density, health clinics, and health utilization. We report two key findings. First, even after the 2014 arrival of over 1 million South Sudanese refugees, host communities with greater refugee presence experienced substantial improvements in local development. Second, using public opinion data, we find no evidence that refugee presence has been associated with more negative (or positive) attitudes towards migrants or migration policy.
Effects of refugee presence in Uganda on public school access, health clinics, health utilization, road density, and a public goods index from 2001 to 2020.
Links: Paper | Supplementary Materials | Replication Materials | Slides | Media: World Bank Blog Post
Navigating ‘Insider’ and ‘Outsider’ Status as Researchers Conducting Field Experiments (with Eunji Kim, Sumitra Badrinathan, Donghyun Danny Choi, and Sabrina Karim). PS: Political Science & Politics, Volume: 55, Issue 4 (May 2022), pp. 754-758.
From textbooks and articles to seminars and online resources, advice on how to successfully design and conduct randomized controlled trials (RCTs) abounds. We agonize over the research design, practitioner partnerships, and participant recruitment to name just a few concerns. But we rarely talk about those who conduct the field experiments—us. Even rarer is a discussion on how the researcher’s identity have methodological consequences, particularly when a researcher is from a background traditionally underrepresented in academia. We the co-authors, all researchers of color, have found that our identity has posed additional challenges—with our expertise, objectivity, status doubted, occasionally followed by muted enthusiasm for participating in experiments. When researcher identity defies the expectations of a typical profile of an academic affiliated with North American or European-based institutions (white and male, in particular), it has important implications for the inferences we draw from field experiments. In this article, we reflect on these challenges and the potential biases that can arise from a researcher’s identity, highlighting our own experiences in the field.
Links: Paper
Reexamining the Effect of Refugees on Civil Conflict: A Global Subnational Analysis (with Andrew Shaver). American Political Science Review, Volume: 115, Issue 4 (November 2021), pp. 1175-1196.
A large literature suggests that the presence of refugees is associated with greater risk of conflict. We argue that the positive effects of hosting refugees on local conditions have been overlooked. Using global data from 1990 to 2018 on locations of refugee communities and civil conflict at the subnational level, we find no evidence that hosting refugees increases the likelihood of new conflict, prolongs existing conflict, or raises the number of violent events or casualties. Furthermore, we explore conditions where provinces are likely to experience substantively large decreases in conflict risk due to increased development. Analysis examining nighttime lights as a measure of development, coupled with expert interviews, support our claim. To address the possibility of selection bias, we use placebo tests and matching. Our research challenges assertions that refugees are security risks. Instead, we show that in many cases, hosting refugees can encourage local development and even conflict reduction.
Map of refugee sites and average number of violent events during our study period 1990 - 2018. Negative effects of concentrated refugee presence on conflict outcomes.
Presented at ISA 2014, APSA 2015, Empirical Studies of Conflict (ESOC) 2019 Annual Meeting at UCSD.
Links: Paper | Supplementary Materials | Replication Materials | Slides | Media: Political Science Now, The Economist
Team and Nation: Sports, Nationalism, and Attitudes toward Refugees (with Leah Rosenzweig). Comparative Political Studies, Volume 54, Issue 12 (October 2021), pp. 2123–2154.
How do major national events influence attitudes toward non-nationals? Recent research suggests that national sports team wins help foster national pride, weaken ethnic attachments, and build trust among conational out-group members. This paper asks a related question: By heightening nationalism, do these victories also affect attitudes towards foreign out-groups, specifically refugees? We examine this question using the 2019 Africa Cup football match between Kenya and Tanzania, which Kenya narrowly won, coupled with an online survey experiment conducted with a panel of 2,647 respondents recruited through Facebook. We find that winning increases national pride and preferences for resource allocation toward conationals, but it also leads to negative views of refugees’ contribution to the country’s diversity. However, we present experimental evidence that reframing national sports victories as a product of cooperation among diverse players and highlighting shared superordinate identities can offset these views and help foster positive attitudes toward refugees.
Effects of winning the Africa Cup match and receiving inclusion primes for Kenyans (vs. Tanzanians) on National Pride and Attitudes on Refugees bringing positive diversity.
Presented at MIT GOV/LAB and APSA 2020.
Links: Paper | Supplementary Materials |
Replication Materials | Pre-Analysis Plan
| Slides | Media: MIT News, UBC Q&A, UW PE Forum Podcast, The Conversation, Digital Fieldwork
Self-Efficacy and Citizen Engagement in Development: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania (with Evan Lieberman). Journal of Experimental Political Science, Volume: 9, Issue 1 (January 2021), pp. 46-63.
Recent studies of efforts to increase citizen engagement in local governance through information campaigns report mixed results. We consider whether low levels of self-efficacy beliefs limit engagement, especially among poor citizens in poor countries. Citizens may be caught in an "efficacy trap" which limits their realization of better public goods provision. We describe results from a series of experimental studies conducted with over 2,200 citizens in rural Tanzania, in which we compare the effects of standard information campaigns with Validated Participation (VP), an intervention designed to socially validate citizens' participation. We implement a staged approach to experimental research, seeking to balance ethical and cost concerns about field experimentation. In our main analyses, we find that VP did not lead to increased levels of self-efficacy or more active citizen behaviors relative to standard informational treatments. Nonetheless, we find some promising evidence for VP in a follow-up qualitative study with teachers. We conclude by discussing lessons from this research and directions for future investigation of the possible role of self-efficacy traps in development.
Effects of Validated Participation vs. Information Only on efficacy (Kilosa study, N = 1,633 parents) and school outcomes 2 years later (Bukoba study, N = 24 schools).
Presented at WGAPE NYU Abu Dhabi 2016, APSA 2017, Yale ISPS Experiments Workshop 2018, Ideas & Evidence at Twaweza East Africa 2018, Harvard Experimental Political Science Graduate Student Conference 2018, African Studies Association 2019.
Links: Paper | Supplementary Materials | Replication Materials | Pre-Analysis Plan | Slides | Media: JEPS Blog
Can Economic Assistance Shape Combatant Support in Wartime? Experimental Evidence from Afghanistan (with Jason Lyall and Kosuke Imai). American Political Science Review, Volume: 114, Issue 1 (February 2020), pp. 126-143.
Governments, militaries, and aid agencies use economic interventions to influence wartime support for combatants. Yet credible evidence of whether these programs can shift support for governments and insurgents remains scarce. We experimentally evaluate a program of livelihood training and one-time unconditional cash transfers on combatant support among 2,597 at-risk youths in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Employing survey methodologies for sensitive questions, we find that training alone has little effect on combatant support. Cash has a boom-and-bust dynamic, initially increasing pro-government sentiment before reversing itself months later, leading to higher Taliban support. When combined with livelihood training, cash increased support for the Afghan government in the medium term. We interpret these results as consistent with a credit capture argument. While each intervention alone was a weak signal of government competency, the combination of training and cash provided participants with sufficient information to revise their beliefs about government performance and responsiveness.
Effects of training (TVET) and cash (UCT) on combatant support measured with endorsement and randomized response at endline and 7 months later.
Presented at the 11th Annual NYU CESS Conference on Experimental Political Science and MPSA 2018.
Links:
Paper | Supplementary Materials | Replication Materials | Pre-Analysis Plan | Slides | Media: Washington Post, Nature Human Behaviour
Design and Analysis of the Randomized Response Technique (with Graeme Blair and Kosuke Imai). Journal of the American Statistical Association, Volume: 110, Issue: 511 (September 2015), pp. 1304-1319.
The randomized response method is a survey technique that seeks to reduce potential bias due to non-response and social desirability when asking questions about sensitive behaviors and beliefs. This survey methodology asks respondents to use a randomization device, such as a coin flip, whose outcome is unobserved by the enumerator. By introducing random noise, the method conceals individual responses and consequently protects respondent privacy. While numerous methodological advances have been made, we find surprisingly few applications of this promising methodology. In this paper, we address this gap by (1) reviewing standard designs available to applied researchers, (2) developing various multivariate regression techniques for substantive analyses, (3) proposing power analyses to help improve research designs, (4) presenting new robust designs that are based on less stringent assumptions than those of the standard designs, and (5) making all described methods available through open-source software. We illustrate some of these methods with an original survey about militant groups in Nigeria.
Power of four standard designs across probabilities of asking for the truth (x-axis) for N=500 and proportions of .1, .2, and .3 with the sensitive trait.
Presented at MPSA 2015 and the UNFPA Expert Group Meeting on Population Data for the 21st century.
Links: Paper | Replication Materials | Slides
INVITED CONTRIBUTIONS
Book Review for Native Bias: Overcoming Discrimination against Immigrants, by Donghyun Danny Choi, Mathias Poertner, and Nicholas Sambanis. Perspective on Politics (June 2023).
Links: Book Review
Unpacking Immigrant Integration: Concepts, Mechanisms, and Context (with Irene Bloemraad, Victoria M. Esses, and Will Kymlicka). World Bank World Development Report 2023 Background Paper.
Links: Paper
Studying Migrant Exclusion Within The Global South. APSA Comparative Politics Newsletter (Spring 2021), pages 66-75.
Links: Paper | Full Issue
WORKING PAPERS
How Refugee Resentment Shapes National Identity and Citizen Participation.
As the number of refugees continues to rise globally, so do concerns about responses from host communities. This project examines how the presence of refugees affects national identity formation and political participation for nearby citizens, particularly in understudied developing contexts where state capacity and national attachments are considered low. I theorize that exposure to refugees leads host citizens to more strongly identify with their national identity as a way to distance themselves from a new migrant out-group. Coupled with feelings of relative deprivation with respect to humanitarian aid, this heightened solidarity with co-nationals drives citizen participation in demanding better public goods provision. I test this theory in a border region of Tanzania that has hosted an influx of over 230,000 Burundian refugees since 2015. Drawing on experimental survey and community focus group data of over 2,000 citizens, I find that greater exposure to refugees substantially increases national identification, resource resentment, and participation in public goods. Additional analyses using geo-referenced primary school outcomes and interviews with government and NGO officials suggest positive downstream effects on public goods outcomes. By showing that animosity towards outsiders has consequences for national identity formation and development, this project highlights alternative pathways to nation-building.
Aerial photos of Nyarugusu camp before and after the 2015 Burundian refugee influx. Survey evidence of citizens (N = 2,025) shows that national identification increases with proximity to the camp. Experimental focus group evidence shows that participants (N = 150) treated with a discussion about refugees were more likely to make comments about public goods grievances in their own communities.
Chapters presented at MPSA 2017, APSA 2017, Immigration Policy Lab at Stanford University, PolMeth XXXV, APSA 2018, CAPERS Fall 2018, African Studies Association 2019, Comparative Politics Seminar at Columbia University, University of Pittsburgh Human Rights and Migration Seminar, Ryerson University Behavioral Political Economy Seminar.
Links: Working Paper | Supplementary Materials | Pre-Analysis Plan | Slides | Poster
Refugee Proximity and Support for Citizenship Exclusion in Africa.
How does proximity to refugees affect citizens’ preferences towards citizenship inclusion or exclusion? In Africa, host to one-third of the world’s refugees, widespread protracted displacement has led to calls for pathways to legal membership. Citizens living near refugees may be more supportive of inclusion because they are more likely to be coethnics and experience benefits from humanitarian aid. Conversely, they may fear negative spillovers and become more protective over membership. Using geo-referenced data of over 1,200 refugee communities and 43,000 Afrobarometer respondents across 28 countries, this study finds that citizens who live closer to refugees in their country are more likely to support restrictions on birthright citizenship and naturalization. Placebo tests using distance to future refugee sites assuage concerns around selection bias. Heterogeneous effects analyses show that citizens who are ethnic minorities, economically vulnerable, and live near older and smaller sites tend to be more exclusionary.
Map of refugee sites and study countries; nonlinear effects of refugee site proximity on support for descent-based, birthright, and naturalization citizenship access.
Presented at ISA 2014, APSA 2014, CAPERS Spring 2015 (NYU), WZB Conference on Migration and Diversity 2015, USC Political Science Dept. 2017, Penn State's New Faces in Political Methodology IX.
Links: Working Paper | Supplementary Materials | Slides
When Refugee Presence Increases Incumbent Support through Development (with Guy Grossman).
In higher-income democracies, studies have found that the growing presence of refugees pushes voters to punish incumbents and turn to far-right parties, as well as increase support for making migration policies more restrictive. Yet there is a dearth of studies on the political consequences of refugee-hosting in low-income countries, where about 85% of refugees reside. Theoretically, we discuss why findings from high-income countries may not generalize to the Global South. We then explore this question empirically in Uganda, one of the largest and more inclusive refugee-hosting countries. Combining information on refugee settlements with four waves of national elections data, we find that a one standard deviation increase in refugee presence leads to a 4.2-percentage point increase in incumbent vote share. Original longitudinal data on healthcare, schools, and roads coupled with national survey data suggest that the mechanism is positive externalities of inclusive refugee-hosting on local public goods.
Heatmap of refugee exposure across parishes, and its positive effects on incumbent voteshare, education access, and citizen assessment of government effectiveness.
Presented at University of Pennsylvania's PDRI Barriers and Bridges to Immigrants' Integration Conference, the MIT Global Diversity Lab, University of Rochester's Riker Seminar, the Amsterdam Centre for European Studies and Center for Conflict Studies.
Links: Working Paper | Supplementary Materials | Slides
Who’s Deserving? How People Experiencing Displacement View Migrant Identity and Asylum Policy (with Margaret Peters, Cybele Kappos, and Thania Sanchez).
How do people leaving their homes due to crises conceptualize the “refugee” or “migrant” label? Do they identify with other refugees and migrant groups? How would they prioritize certain types of migrants for resettlement in our current system? What do they think of the current system and possible changes to it. While numerous studies have explored host citizens’ attitudes on migration, largely within in the Global North, this study highlights the views of those affected by three major recent forced displacement contexts. We interviewed Syrians (N=1192) and Iraqis (N=235) living in Turkey, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq, as well as Venezuelans (N=1612) living in Colombia. We also conducted six focus groups (N=36) and community leader interviews (N=8) with Syrians living in Istanbul, Turkey. Our study is unique in that we are able to make multiple comparisons: across displacement contexts, and between those who are legally categorized by the international community as “refugees” (Syrians and Iraqis) and those who do not fall under this legal category (Venezuelans). We use conjoint experiments to probe respondents’ views on which refugees are deserving of being granted asylum and/or receive assistance. We find similar results across contexts: our respondents do not strongly identify with the “refugee” label or other migrant groups; they favor their conationals and people who are experiencing similar crises for priority entrance. We find little evidence that they develop solidarities with other migrant groups or engage in perspective-taking.
For Syrian (left), Iraqi (center), and Venezuelan (right) survey respondents, conjoint experiment effects showing preferred migrant attributes.
Presented at the 2021 Refugee/Migrant Binary Workshop and APSA 2022.
Links: Working Paper | Supplementary Materials | Pre-Analysis Plan | Slides