Research
My research examines how immigrants and minorities come to belong politically in democratic societies. I ask two questions that are two sides of the same process: how do immigrants politically integrate into host societies, and how do democratic communities define who belongs? I argue that political belonging is not a fixed status people possess or lack, but something continually negotiated through everyday interactions with natives, the boundaries groups draw around themselves, and the political language that defines who counts as a legitimate member.
Peer-Reviewed Articles
Engaged but Targeted? How Immigrants Vote Against Anti-Immigrant Agendas in Europe.
What Can Dual Citizens Teach Us about Political Engagement?
Divergent Paths of Integration in the Post-Multicultural Era: Interculturalism in Spain and Civic Integration in France.
Book Chapters
Linguistic Polarization in Minority Representation: Analyzing Parliamentary Speeches in Germany and the UK (1980-2021).
Working Papers
- Not All Contact Is Equal: Interaction with Natives and Immigrant Political Integration in Hostile Contexts
Abstract
Immigrants in contemporary Europe live inside a contradiction: they build daily lives alongside natives whose parties and publics increasingly declare them unwelcome. Research on their political integration has focused on formal standing such as citizenship, language, and labor-market access, yet it is in everyday contact with natives that immigrants learn whether the community regards them as members. What do these contacts do to political integration when the surrounding climate is hostile? Drawing on the German Socio-Economic Panel (2021-2022) linked to district-level measures of political hostility (AfD vote share) and societal hostility (native attitudes toward immigration), and complementing the survey evidence with 18 in-depth interviews with recent immigrants from Syria and Turkey, I find that immigrants who feel recognized in everyday interactions report higher political trust, efficacy, and interest, while those who feel unappreciated report less. The two forms of hostility, however, condition contact in distinct ways. Under political hostility, the benefits of everyday contact attenuate. Under societal hostility, everyday contact persists but deep ties transform: native friendships strengthen belonging in welcoming contexts, yet this association reverses where native concern is high, with immigrants embedded in native networks reporting lower belonging than those in co-ethnic ones. Contact does not integrate immigrants uniformly and its consequences depend not only on how hostile the context is, but on which kind of hostility it is.
- Presented at PRIEC 2026, MPSA 2026, APSA 2025
- Cross-Ethnic Social Interactions and Multilevel Belonging Among First-Generation Immigrants in Quebec
Abstract
How do immigrants come to feel they belong in their new country? This paper examines how everyday social interactions, both with people from their own ethnic community and with people from different backgrounds, are associated with immigrant belonging. Using original survey data from 1,795 first-generation immigrants across 29 localities in Quebec, we show that the same kinds of interaction are associated with different forms of belonging depending on political context. We compare two contexts that the same immigrant population lives under: Canada’s multicultural framework, which treats keeping one’s ethnic identity as compatible with being Canadian, and Quebec’s interculturalist framework, which expects immigrants to converge around a shared French-language public culture. Under Canada’s framework, both kinds of interaction are associated with belonging in different ways: cross-ethnic friendship is associated with feeling accepted, and co-ethnic friendship is associated with feeling attached. Under Quebec’s framework, only cross-ethnic interaction is associated with belonging; co-ethnic interactions are politically invisible. We also find that the costs of discrimination are largest in Quebec, where the demand to integrate is highest. The political context in which cross-ethnic recognition appears most consequential is also where exclusion is most costly.
- Presented at MPSA 2025
- Is Six Degrees of Separation Five Too Many? A Research Note about Extended Contact
Abstract
According to extended contact theory, knowing an ingroup member who has outgroup friends can reduce prejudice even without direct intergroup contact. Over a hundred articles have been published in social psychology journals, and they tend to show positive effects, albeit smaller than those of direct contact. However, the majority of this work is correlational, and to our knowledge, there have been few field experiments designed to study the effect of extended contact. To validate the theory, we first identify three causal mechanisms through which extended contact could operate: direct attitude influence, norm perception, and information transmission. We then argue that several well-identified causal studies inadvertently test these mechanisms and that they fail those tests when it comes to political attitudes. Drawing on field experiments of voter mobilization and observational studies of military conscription, we find that behavioral spillover requires physical cohabitation and a proximate act, while attitudinal spillover fails even among women most plausibly in contact with conscripted men. These findings raise questions about the external validity of the extended contact literature and call for more rigorous causal tests of the theory.
- Inter-Minority Attitudes Among Refugees in Germany
Abstract
Research on attitudes toward immigrants and refugees has focused overwhelmingly on the perceptions of native majorities, leaving how minority groups evaluate one another comparatively underexplored. Using original survey data on young male Syrian and Afghan refugees in Germany (PARFORM), we examine feeling-thermometer ratings of six target groups: the German majority, the respondents’ own group in Germany and in their home country, the respective other refugee group, Turks, and Ukrainian refugees. We argue that structural differences in the two groups’ integration (faster asylum procedures, more secure protection status, and greater labor-market access among Syrians) can explain intergroup boundaries among refugees. Consistent with the reflective distinctiveness hypothesis, Syrians display stronger ingroup favoritism than Afghans and rate Afghans more negatively than vice versa, as Afghans pose a reputational threat to the more advantageously positioned group. This asymmetry does not appear for Ukrainians, who differ from both groups in religious and demographic profile. Notably, Syrians and Afghans also do not differ in their warmth toward the German majority: structural advantages are an important factor that can explain how refugees see themselves and each other, but not how they see the host society. These findings underscore that ethnic and migration hierarchies are constructed not only from above, but also from below.
Work in Progress
- Well-Integrated Immigrants Without a Sense of Belonging? Revisiting Integration Paradox and Successful Integration in Western Europe
Abstract
This study examines the relationship between immigrants' economic integration and their sense of belonging in European host societies. Using the 2018 European Social Survey, I employ a three-step analytical approach to demonstrate the absence of a significant effect of economic integration on immigrants' sense of belonging.
- Presented at Washington-Illinois Student Exchange 2022, PRIEC 2023, MPSA 2022
Not the Same Kind of Immigrant! Boundary-Making Among Co-National Immigrants
- The Politics of Losers: Electoral Fraud Allegations and Intraparty Vulnerability in Consolidated Democracies
Abstract
Democratic stability depends on losers' consent: the willingness of defeated candidates to accept outcomes and to continue competing within electoral rules. Yet recent elections have increasingly featured defeated candidates refusing to concede and alleging electoral fraud. Why do some losing candidates make allegations of electoral fraud and refuse to concede defeat? In this project, we argue that post-electoral fraud allegations are shaped by intraparty competition. Specifically, candidates with precarious standing within their party due to outsider status, leadership contestation, or expected intraparty challenges face stronger incentives to delegitimize electoral outcomes and externalize blame for defeat. To test these claims, we construct an original cross-national, candidate-level dataset of electoral fraud allegations in consolidated democracies since 1990. Preliminary findings suggest that candidates facing intraparty competition are more likely to allege electoral fraud after defeat, implying a paradox in which defeated candidates undermine electoral legitimacy to compete in future elections. The project broadens our understanding of democratic backsliding, party politics, misinformation, and comparative electoral politics.
Who Counts as Patriotic?