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Elif Naz Kayran received APSA Best Dissertation Award

Dr. Elif Naz Kayran received the Best Dissertation Award from the Migration & Citizenship Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA) for her dissertation 'Political Responses and Electoral Behaviour at Times of Socioeconomic Risk Inequalities and Immigration'

This award is given to a dissertation on migration and/or citizenship accepted in the previous calendar year (2020). The dissertation committee of Dr. Kayran was composed of Jonas Pontusson (Uni. Geneva), Melanie Kolbe (IHEID), David Rueda (Oxford), and David Sylvan (IHEID).  

Elif: 'I am still pretty much stunned about the news, and it took me a couple of re-reads of the message to believe it. What started the project was my interest in really understanding what makes or has made some people feel negatively towards immigration and whether there is room for positive change through institutional and economic means. While my interest in developing such a project is at least seven years old, it took a lot of support and an incredible number of refinements, encouragement, and honest critique from many people to turn into this version. So, personally, this acknowledgement from APSA’s Migration & Citizenship section makes me feel a great sense of community and encouraged to pursue and continue researching these kinds of challenging questions.'

What started the project was my interest in really understanding what makes or has made some people feel negatively towards immigration and whether there is room for positive change through institutional and economic means

Kayran is a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Public Administration. She works on the research programme Social Citizenship & Migration. Before joining Leiden University, Kayran was a junior visiting scholar in at the University of Oxford. She received her PhD (summa cum laude) in political science from the Graduate Institute Geneva. Kayran currently works on topics related to comparative political economy, welfare states, immigration, voting rights, and citizenship studies. Most recently, she investigates the relationship between trade unions and immigrant rights and the political participation gaps between immigrant and native citizens

The dissertation examines the economic basis of political opposition to immigration in Europe in the twenty-first century and goes beyond existing studies of the economic effects of immigration,  cultural differences,  ethnic and national identity,  and partisanship, and instead to understand the impact of unevenly distributed socio-economic risks. The empirical analyses of the thesis use cross-national survey data and national indicators and a longitudinal case study from Germany. The project's multi-level and multi-country comparative analyses, covering the period since the 2000s, lay the foundation for a link between uneven exposure of economic risks in advanced post-industrial democracies and subsequent reactions against immigration. Ultimately, the project shows both how recent socio-economic inequalities shape citizens' political responses towards immigration and how, in turn, these demands determine the trajectory of European politics in this century.  

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