Migration & Forced Displacement

How do policymakers respond to forcibly displaced people, and how do migration policies shape where people move and the consequences of their flight? This agenda advances and tests a theory of displacement policymaking in the Global South, emphasizing cross-border kinship, civil war, and local integration capacity.

Global South displacement policy. The Developing World Refugee and Asylum Policy (DWRAP) dataset covers 54 de jure provisions across 92 countries from 1952 to 2017. With Guy Grossman and Jeremy M. Weinstein, I show that intense civil wars in neighboring countries are the primary impetus for policy reform (IO 2022), and that more liberal de jure policies attract forced migrants — conditional on transnational ethnic kin who diffuse policy knowledge (APSR 2022).

Climate migration. With Sabrina B. Arias, I show that the public views climate migrants as occupying an intermediate position between economic migrants and refugees (JOP 2022), and that exposure to climate disasters such as Hurricane Ian briefly increases support for climate migrants and climate action, though effects decay within months (APSR 2024).