Ongoing Research

Do place-based interventions that raise visibility and economic activity affect far-right voting? We study the Tour de France (TdF) as a case of brief but visible exposure that combines economic activity with symbolic recognition. Using variation in the annual TdF route between 2002 and 2022, we show that exposed municipalities experience declines in far-right support of 0.03–0.04 standard deviations. The effect exceeds 0.1 standard deviations in recent elections and is strongest in poorer areas and in towns with high prior far-right support. We find evidence consistent with the symbolic mechanism and mixed evidence for the economic one. TdF exposure increases local GDP per capita, effects on voting are larger when French riders win stages, and a two-wave survey around the 2025 TdF provides suggestive evidence that residents in exposed towns report greater recognition. These results contribute to research on geographic inequalities, symbolic politics, and the consequences of place-based interventions.

The contact hypothesis rests on a potential paradox: positive outgroup exemplars may be dismissed as exceptional while negative exemplars may be taken as representative. We investigate whether this asymmetry burdens minorities, in the case of parasocial contact with elite athletes in the English Premier League. Drawing on millions of social media posts, newspaper articles, and Fantasy Premier League transfer data, we find no evidence that minority players are punished more harshly for poor performances. Survey experiments among fans and non-fans demonstrate that negative coverage of a minority player reduces perceived typicality, and among those with parasocial ties, increased outgroup tolerance and empathy. We attribute this to parasocial buffering. The voluntary, passion-driven nature of fandoms may encourage observers to individuate outgroup members and respond with compassion. By treating typicality as an outcome rather than a precondition, we find that negative experiences need not reinforce intergroup stereotypes. Parasocial exposure to celebrities may be especially well-suited for reducing prejudice in scalable and ethical ways.

Do external security threats reduce support for far-right parties? Existing scholarship suggests such threats should weaken extreme parties by generating rally effects, shifting attention to foreign policy, and increasing demand for experienced leadership. We develop a theoretical framework distinguishing these channels and test them in the context of Russian aggression in Europe. In Study 1, leveraging an unexpected event during survey fieldwork in the European Social Survey, we find no evidence that Russia's invasion of Ukraine reduced support for far-right parties. In Study 2, a pre-registered survey experiment in Germany, we expose respondents to a scenario of US withdrawal from NATO and a Russian invasion of an EU member state. Threats increase demand for competent leadership and boost incumbent support by about 4 points, but do not reduce far-right support, which proves remarkably sticky. Together, these findings show that security shocks can reshape mainstream competition without eroding far-right support.

What explains refugee return? We theorize return as a two-stage process. Safety screens return, and other factors begin to shape who returns only after refugees judge it safe enough. We test this argument with an 11-wave panel of 3,003 Syrian refugee households in Lebanon from 2019 to 2026, spanning the fall of the Assad regime. Before the fall, the return rate averaged 1.6% per wave despite worsening conditions in Lebanon, and baseline intentions rarely translated into return behavior. After the fall, the rate rose to 9.7% per wave, while intentions, income, and networks became stronger predictors of return. Event-study estimates show that the increase was concentrated where the regime previously posed the threat: by the last wave, the return rate rose 10.1 percentage points (95% CI [3.7, 16.5]) more in areas under the new government than under the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. Qualitative interviews further show how safety shapes return.

Following the onset of the Syrian conflict in 2011, Lebanon came to host over one million refugees under a restrictive policy regime that limited their pathways to integration or stable livelihoods. Drawing on panel survey data from 3,003 refugee households across Lebanon between 2019 and 2026 as well as repeated qualitative interviews, we provide a descriptive account of how Syrian refugees survived under this regime and multiple economic, health, and political crises. To describe these patterns, we inductively develop the concept of refugee forbearance, a governance regime in which exclusionary rules governing refugees are selectively and inconsistently enforced. Our data show three important patterns of refugee livelihoods under this regime. First, the majority of refugees lived informally, lacking residence documentation and access to legal employment. Second, refugees pieced together fragmented strategies to survive, relying on intermittent and informal work, humanitarian aid, and widespread borrowing. Third, we find relatively little social integration as refugees reported infrequent and transactional contact with Lebanese while relying on in-group networks. These patterns persisted through several crises, including Lebanon's economic collapse, the COVID-19 pandemic, a political vacuum, and war with Israel. They portray protracted displacement in a context common across many low- and middle-income host countries that are characterized by exclusionary rules and selective enforcement.

Existing research claims that natives perceive refugees' gender as a signal of deservingness of protection, threat, and cultural distance. But in most experiments, these signals are bundled into a single attribute, and a standard setup cannot separate which one gender carries. We decompose them using a conjoint experiment with systematic attribute omission, an Implicit Association Test, and an open-ended question, fielded in Germany in 2025. Across all three methods, gender signals vulnerability and security, but signals on cultural distance are much weaker. When vulnerability information is absent from profiles, respondents perceive female refugees as more vulnerable than male refugees (0.22 points on the 1–7 scale); when criminal record information is absent, they perceive male refugees as greater security threats (0.34 points). The gender gap in perceived cultural distance is small, whether or not religion and language information is shown (0.06) or absent (0.08); the IAT and the open-ended responses show the same pattern. We find no overall effect of gender on preferences for refugees. These results challenge a dominant interpretation of gender in refugee attitudes. The attribute omission design we introduce applies to any conjoint attribute that bundles multiple associations and offers a template for distinguishing mechanisms from average treatment effects.