My research calls for a bottom-up study of the relationship between noncitizens and the state, and as such, draws attention to the claims, everyday practices, and lived experiences that shape how state power is negotiated, contested, and reproduced at the margins of formal citizenship. In doing so, my work takes the claims and experiences of injustice of my interlocutors as starting points to theorize the desirability of ethical principles we have dismissed or overlooked.
Dissertation
Titled Playing the Asylum Game, my dissertation project uses the game metaphor to redescribe asylum as a social practice, challenging assumptions of the humanitarian language used by political theorists. I do that to destabilize the lens through which we traditionally study asylum, thereby exposing new avenues of moral concern and capturing the experiences of individuals in the grip of immigration institutions. I start by challenging the canonical understanding of the relationship between noncitizens and the state. Scholars of migration, and political science more broadly, theorize the state as an actor that goes to great lengths to render noncitizens readable, hence controllable. Instead, I show that asylum seekers are the ones who must be on the search for and find the state, while making themselves legible. However, once they reach the soil of an affluent country, they often are met with the wrong state: a lawless state actor that prevents them from accessing the systems of rights they are entitled to. Asylum seekers, thus, must look not for any state but the right and law-abiding state.
This redescription also gives rise to two important theoretical points. First, it allows us to explore claim-making amid the normative and juridical environment of asylum, envisioning which forms of agency are empowering and arguing how and why the state should promote them. Second, I ask what state actors owe to noncitizens, and what principles should govern their action. Relying on the claims of asylum seekers and their invocation of what I call the right state, I offer a defense of the rule of law as the guiding moral principle for immigration reform and state action. I conceptualize the rule of law as comprising the following necessary conditions: predictable and reliable rules, equal access to the legal system, and due process. By shedding light on the importance of procedural justice in immigration debates in political theory, I demonstrate that asylum seekers can only exercise meaningful agency within a rule of law context.
Second Project
My second project will investigate the process from asylum to citizenship, focusing on how asylees—noncitizens with legal status—make membership claims on the state. Drawing on the experiences of individuals who have recently secured asylum, I examine how past persecution shapes the ongoing responsibilities of the state. I will compare the trajectories of asylees with those who receive protection under the Convention Against Torture or withholding of removal. These latter forms of relief satisfy the principle of non-refoulement—ensuring individuals are not returned to danger—yet provide no pathway to citizenship. The project examines the state’s obligations toward those it has already recognized as needing protection, while evaluating the promises and perils of citizenship status.
Peer-Reviewed Publications
OnlineFirst. “Grounding the Diasporic Turn in Political Theory” (with Kai Yui Samuel Chan), American Journal of Political Science
Diasporas remain understudied in political theory. To ground a robust engagement with diasporas, in this article, we offer a non-statist framework of political community. This framework is needed as diasporas are transnational groups that share overlapping webs of narratives and practices but lack institutional and ideological unity. Tracking these features, we posit that individuals constitute a diasporic community by sharing a joint meta-commitment, which is expressed through practices and narratives. Through these expressions, diasporic members commit to acting as part of the same community without any necessary or further substantial agreements. This meta-commitment grounds, minimally, an obligation of answerability: diasporic members owe to each other an answer as to how their choices relate to the future of the diaspora.
Work in Progress
“Allocating Time in Asylum Systems,” R & R
“Managing Time: Speeding Up and Slowing Down the Asylum Clock,” R & R
“Rethinking Securitization,” draft (with Mark Bevir)
“The Asymmetric Effects of Migration Policy Change,” draft (with David Hausman, Mary Hoopes, and Adam Cox)
“Due Process Forever?” draft