Research

I research political participation and government responsiveness in different regimes types and world regions. The goal of my work is to understand why some voters have more influence in politics than others and how voters can influence policy-making even when they are excluded from the formal political process. Most of my work links political participation and responsiveness to different forms of migration.

My book project studies how domestic migration transforms electoral politics and civil society in rich democracies. I argue that due to important political differences between migrants and non-migrants, migration changes the composition of local electorates. These changes lead to inequalities in political participation and alter the incentives of political parties, which raises inequality in political representation.

A second, co-authored book project studies domestic migration in southern Africa. We argue that the social and political integration of domestic migrants depends on the social institutions that shape entry into and life in these communities. To support this argument, we leverage a unique face-to-face household survey of more than 20,000 respondents in Malawi and Zambia as well as elite surveys and focus group discussions.

My research on closed authoritarian regimes asks when autocratic governments respond to the demands of ordinary citizens despite state institutions that minimize the formal political say of citizens. Drawing on in-depth archival fieldwork on the internal politics of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), I identify little-acknowledged ways though which citizens can still influence politics despite extreme political inequality. Part of this research has been published in the American Political Science Review.

My work on unauthorized migration in the United States seeks to understand how unauthorized immigarants navigate life while being politically disenfranchised. The focus of this work is on how immigrants respond to local immigration policies. Part of this work has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). It has been widely cited by local and national newspapers, including the Editorial Board of The New York Times.

To further our understanding of these topics, my research employs modern techniques for causal inference using observational data, survey experiments, geospatial analysis, text analysis, and archival fieldwork.

My work has been published or is forthcoming in the American Political Science Review, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), World Politics, the Journal of Politics, Democratization, the Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy, and the European Political Science Review, among others. See here for a full list of publications.

Information on my latest working papers is available here. You can learn more about my current work in progress here.