Maxwell School News and Commentary

Prema Kurien, professor of sociology, says there is a logical reason why immigrant groups exhibit higher rates of religiosity. “Immigration and relocation from a familiar context to something completely unfamiliar is a theologizing experience,” Kurien says. “It raises existential questions—things that people don’t think about when they are in their home country with a familiar community.”

“Title 42 is only the most recent of a long history of using health concerns as a justification for free movement restrictions," says Elizabeth Cohen, professor of political science. "For example, it was only in 2010 that restrictions were removed on the entry of persons who are HIV positive."

“If the U.S. dismissed him wholeheartedly, it’s going to make these conversations—and again some of these are happening behind closed doors—a hell of a lot more difficult to be had,” says Gladys McCormick, Jay and Debe Moskowitz Endowed Chair on Mexico-U.S. Relations, regarding the immigration talks between the U.S. and Mexico as Title 42 lifts this week.

Between 1900 and 1940, roughly five million southern whites left former Confederate states and neighboring Oklahoma. In a peer-reviewed study to be published later this year, Thomas Pearson, assistant professor of economics, and his co-authors found that this group was not just greater in number, but, as they spread their culture and attitudes, perhaps in political influence, too.

The associate professor of political science will examine what constitutes a refugee crisis in her second book.

"Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees" (Oxford University Press, 2021), written by Associate Professor of Political Science Lamis Abdelaaty, received the Distinguished Book Award from the International Studies Association's Ethnicity, Nationalism, & Migration Studies section.

"Social Status and Gendered Pathways to Citizenship," co-authored by Professor of Political Science Audie Klotz, was published in International Migration Review. 

The Forum on Early-Modern Empires and Global Interactions (FEEGI) awarded its 2022 book prize to Tessa Murphy, associate professor of history, for her book "The Creole Archipelago: Race and Borders in the Colonial Caribbean." 

As a fellow, Lamis Abdelaaty, associate professor of political science, will work on her proposal, "The Emissary Speaks: Political Agency in Refugee-UNHCR Correspondence."

"Attitudes about Refugees and Immigrants Arriving in the United States: A Conjoint Experiment," authored by Associate Professor of Political Science Lamis Abdelaaty, was published in Ethnic and Racial Studies.