Academic Profile

I am a political theorist interested in the relationship between noncitizens and the state.

In political theory, citizenship is often thought of as a bundle of rights. These rights are meant to enable citizens to make claims on the state and protect them from arbitrary power. But it is less clear how we should think about the normative relationship between noncitizens and the state: What moral principles should govern that relationship, and what, if anything, do state actors owe to noncitizens? To begin answering these questions, my work focuses on one of the systems through which noncitizens gain access to the state: asylum.

Methodologically, I use interpretive and ethnographic methods to draw 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. 

Drawing on my fieldwork, my book manuscript, Playing the Asylum Game, proposes a practice-based exploration of asylum to examine the norms and institutions we should use to identify and protect those seeking safety, establishing normative principles for a fairer asylum system. I show that asylum law dominates noncitizens in an objectionable way when it does not satisfy rule-of-law and procedural justice requirements, thereby subjecting asylum seekers to arbitrary power. This argument about the importance of procedural justice comes from asylum seekers themselves, who often experienced immigration law as a cruel, lottery-like game with unclear rules. ‍

I hold a PhD in Political Science from UC Berkeley. Before that, I received a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Pompeu Fabra University, spending one year at the University of Chicago, and an MA in International Conflict Studies from King’s College London.