Lecturer in Government at Harvard University
I study the ways immigration affects politics and intergroup relations. My dissertation explores how new migration flows influence relations between citizens and immigrants in Chile, Brazil, and Europe.
I study the ways immigration affects politics and intergroup relations. My dissertation explores how new migration flows influence relations between citizens and immigrants in Chile, Brazil, and Europe.
Contact:
rasband@g.harvard.edu
rasband@g.harvard.edu
About Me
I am a Lecturer and the Pedagogy Fellow at Harvard's Department of Government, studying comparative politics. I study identity politics, public opinion and intergroup relations with an emphasis on migration. My work incorporates a variety of methodological approaches, including survey data, interviews, and experiments. I have conducted fieldwork in Brazil, Colombia, Thailand, and the United Kingdom.
I am a member of Harvard's Working Group in Political Psychology and an affiliate of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science. I hold a B.A. in Political Science from Brigham Young University. I received my Ph.D. in November 2024.
Job Market Paper
Taking the Heat: How Salient New Immigrant Groups Redirect Xenophobic Public Opinion
Under what conditions can xenophobic attitudes toward immigrants recede? I argue that citizens’ evaluations of one group are made relative to other salient groups in their environment. Accordingly, a new group’s arrival can lead local citizens to improve their opinions about other already present immigrant groups by providing contrast and redirecting negative attention formerly given to others.
I test this argument with data from Chile, a long-standing host of Peruvian migrants which also received over 350,000 Venezuelan migrants between 2016 and 2019. By combining internet search data, a panel survey of group-specific attitudes, and an original survey experiment, I show that Chileans’ attitudes about Peruvian migrants improved markedly as Venezuelan migration increased in salience during this period. These findings suggest that prejudice towards some migrants can decline quickly simply by hosts switching reference groups as new immigrants arrive, without requiring longer-term processes of assimilation or group recategorization.