Stanford University

Migration and Citizenship

Human Rights and Refugees in Europe

 

The rights of refugees and obligations of states under international law was broadly addressed before focusing on how European Union law affects these rights and obligations. Discussants explored how international law has influenced the ways in which Europe and the larger international community has addressed the latest refugee crisis.

Co-sponsored by The Europe Center and the WSD HANDA Center for Human Rights and International Justice.

Headshot of Emily Arnold Fernandez


Emily Arnold-Fernández, the founder and executive director of Asylum Access, is a social entrepreneur and human rights pioneer.

A lawyer who has advocated nationally and internationally for the human rights of women, children, and other vulnerable individuals, Emily first became involved in refugee rights in 2002, when she represented refugees in United Nations proceedings in Cairo, Egypt.

Her first client was a young Liberian who had fled to Egypt to avoid being abducted and forced to fight as a child soldier. Because he was initially denied legal status as a refugee, he was at constant risk of arrest, detention and deportation by Egyptian authorities unless he could get the decision reversed – and he only had one chance to do so. Emily’s legal advocacy won her client protection and safety in Egypt until his eventual resettlement in the U.S. Unfortunately, Cairo was one of the few places where refugees had access to legal advocates like Emily.

Recognizing that refugees throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America – some of whom flee with nothing more than the clothes on their backs – were almost always unequipped to go into a legal proceeding in a foreign country, alone, and explain why they should not be deported, Emily founded Asylum Access to advocate on behalf of refugees seeking to assert their rights.

For her innovative approach to the global refugee crisis, Emily was honored by the Dalai Lama as one of 50 “Unsung Heroes of Compassion” from around the world (2009), Waldzell Institute’s Architects of the Future Award (2012) and Grinnell College Young Innovator for Social Justice Prize (2013). She has also been recognized as Pomona College’s Inspirational Young Alumna (2006), awarded the prestigious Echoing Green fellowship (2007), and recognized as the New Leaders Council’s 40 Under 40 (2010), among others.

Emily’s ground-breaking work with Asylum Access has earned her international speaking invitations and widespread media attention, including the Rotary International Peace Symposium (2008, 2009), the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ Annual Consultations (2008, 2009), a cover feature in the Christian Science Monitor (September 2009), and the San Francisco Examiner’s Credo column (July 2011). She holds a B.A. cum laude from Pomona College and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.

Committed to sharing her knowledge with young and aspiring social entrepreneurs, Emily serves as an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco, teaching a course in social entrepreneurship. In Fall 2012, Emily was selected as one of three Social Entrepreneurs in Residence at Stanford where she participated as “expert respondent” in Stanford Law School’s Law, Social Entrepreneurship and Social Change course, and this Spring 2013, Emily is leading an intensive skills-building course on social entrepreneurship at Pomona College.

Even before founding Asylum Access, Emily was an accomplished human rights advocate. She previously litigated civil rights claims in private practice and with Equal Rights Advocates, where she was part of the legal team in the landmark gender discrimination case against Wal-Mart. She has also been involved in a range of international work, including collaborating with a Nigerian women’s rights organization to draft a gender-egalitarian model Shar’ia marriage and divorce code.

A visionary human rights activist, Emily Arnold-Fernández takes her inspiration from a line in a June Jordan poem: “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”

Emily is particularly passionate about Asylum Access, however, because it has the power to transform refugee rights from paper promises to on-the-ground reality. “For half a century, international law has given refugees the rights to live safely, seek employment, send children to school and rebuild their lives. But those rights are meaningless unless they are respected on the ground,” she says. “Asylum Access provides a rare opportunity to fill a gaping hole in our human rights system – by making refugee rights a reality for real people.”

Discussants: James Cavallaro, Stanford Law School and Jenny S. Martinez, Stanford Law School. 
                        

Emily Arnold-Fernandez Founder and Executive Director Speaker Asylum Access
James Cavallaro Professor of law and Founder and Director of the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic Discussant Stanford Law School
Jenny S. Martinez Warren Christopher Professor in the Practice of International Law and Diplomacy Discussant Stanford Law School
Panel Discussions

Paris attacks add to debate on Syria and immigration

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Last Friday's multiple terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 129 people and injured over 350 was the topic of KQED Radio’s “forum with Michael Krasny" (Monday, Nov. 16, 2015).   The discussion centered around the potential impact to US and European strategy for fighting ISIS, immigration policy, and to French nationalism, values and public discourse on multiculturalism and open borders.

Participating in the panel was French literature associate professor and TEC faculty affiliate Cécile Alduy.  Alduy is the author of the recent book Marine Le Pen's Words: Deciphering the New National Front's Discourse.

Joining Alduy were Bloomberg Paris bureau chief Geraldine Amiel, UC Berkeley professor of public policy Michael Nacht, and Brookings’ Center for Middle East Policy fellow William McCants.

Visit KQED Radio's Forum web article “France Closes Borders After Multiple Terror Attacks in Paris" to download a recording of this interview.

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On Cruelty: Global Reflections from the Age of Revolutions to the War on Citizenship

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This is the second meeting of the workshop series on Civility, Cruelty, Truth. A one-day event hosted by the Stanford Humanities Center, the workshop will explore the genealogies, promises, and limits of civic virtue—at the heart of which is the city, the classical polis, itself— as a universal ideal. European in its moral contours, constituted by a deep fascination with the rule of law, borders, and security, at once coercive and oblique in whom it excludes and includes, how it punishes and protects, the city held out the promise of a humane center for ethical and sovereign life, one upon which anticolonial struggles against European empires too were first conceived and mounted. This workshop will examine the ambiguous foundations and resolutions of that vision in Asia, Europe, and the fatal waters in between; a vision that has come to be marked today by extreme violence and tragic displacements, and which now presses new questions against the very limit of modern political imagination.
 
Faculty Organizer: Aishwary Kumar (Department of History)
Student Assistant: Ahoo Najafian (Department of Religious Studies)
 
Schedule (coming soon)
 

Co-sponsored by the Department of History, Department of Religious Studies, The Europe Center, The France- Stanford Center for interdisciplinary Studies, Program in Global Justice, McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, Stanford Global Studies, School of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford Humanities Center, Center for South Asia

 

Stanford Humanities Center
424 Santa Teresa St.
 

Conferences

New study links immigrant naturalization to long-term political integration

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One of the key policy debates in Europe centers on how best to integrate immigrants. The issue is particularly salient in Switzerland where immigrants make up almost 25% of the population. New research from scholars at Stanford and the University of Zurich demonstrates that naturalization substantially improves the political integration of immigrants. 

Jens Hainmueller, faculty affiliate of The Europe Center and co-director of the Immigration and Integration Policy Lab, along with his co-authors Dominik Hangartner and Giuseppe Pietrantuono, use an innovative research strategy to show that naturalization serves as a catalyst for integration. 

Between 1970 and 2003 residents decided on naturalization applications in secret ballot referendumsin some Swiss municipalities. The researchers compare immigrants who just barely won a referendum with those that just barely lost, and the resulting natural experiment provides a treatment and control group that are almost identical. 

"In some cases, the difference between them was merely a few votes, which turned 49% into 51%. It was down to luck whether people received Swiss citizenship or not," says Professor Hainmueller. 

And because the researchers were able to survey immigrants 15 years after their naturalization decisions, the study provides one of the first unbiased estimates of the causal impact of naturalization on the long-term integration of immigrants. 

In Switzerland, where immigrants must wait twelve years to apply for citizenship, the study suggests that reducing this waiting period could improve immigrant integration and positively impact Swiss society. 

The full article is located on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences website.

A recent news article on this research can be found in the October 22, 2015 Stanford Report

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Sarah Cormack-Patton

Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA  94305
 

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Post-doctoral Fellow at The Europe Center, 2015-2016
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Sarah Cormack-Patton received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh in August 2015. She is a political economist working at the nexus of comparative politics and international relations with a focus on European politics. Sarah is interested in how the cross-border movement of goods, capital, and people impacts the domestic policy-making process, and how domestic politics affect these cross-border flows. In her current research, Sarah examines these questions through the lens of international migration. Sarah's doctoral dissertation examined the ways in which varying bundles of migrant rights affect domestic preferences over immigration, the effect of these rights on the policy-making coalitions that form over immigration, and how these preferences aggregate in various institutional environments. In addition to her Ph.D., Sarah holds a BS in International Affairs and Modern Languages (French) and MS in International Affairs from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a MA in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh.

 

Migration crisis divides European policymakers

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The recent discovery of at least 50 dead migrants aboard a boat off the shores of Libya sparked a discussion on KQED Radio’s “forum with Michael Krasny" about the escalating crisis (Thurs., Aug. 27, 2015). Cécile Alduy, Stanford associate professor of French literature and affiliated faculty at The Europe Center was one of those asked to weigh in on Europe’s migration policy struggle.

Also joining the discussion was Gregory Maniatis, senior European Policy Fellow at the Migration Policy Institute and Tom Nuttall, Charlemagne columnist for The Economist.

Visit KQED Radio's Forum web article “More Migrants Found Dead as Hundreds of Thousands Flee to Europe” to download a recording of this interview.

 

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The Europe Center October 2014 Newsletter

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The Europe Center Graduate Student Grant Competition

Call for Proposals:

The Europe Center is pleased to announce the Fall 2014 Graduate Student Grant Competition for graduate and professional students at Stanford whose research or work focuses on Europe. Funds are available for Ph.D. candidates from across a wide range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences to prepare for dissertation research and to conduct research on approved dissertation projects. The Europe Center also supports early graduate students who wish to determine the feasibility of a dissertation topic or acquire training relevant for that topic. Moreover, funds are available for professional students whose interests focus on some aspect of European politics, economics, history, or culture; the latter may be used to support an internship or a research project. Grants range from $500 to $5000.

Additional information about the grants, as well as the online application form, can be found here.  The deadline for this Fall’s competition is Friday, October 17th. Recipients will be notified by November 7th. A second competition is scheduled for Spring 2015.
 

Highlights from 2013-2014:

In the 2013-2014 academic year, the Center awarded grants to 26 graduate students in departments ranging from Linguistics to Political Science to Anthropology. We would like to introduce you to some of the students that we support and the projects on which they are working. Our featured students this month are Michela Giorcelli (Economics) and Orysia Kulick (History).

Giorc

elli’s project, “The Effects of Management and Technology on Firms’ Productivity: Lesson from the US Marshall Plan in Italy,” explores the role of productivity in the process of economic growth and development. It is typically difficult to isolate the causal effect of management training programs and technology transfer programs on business productivity because these measures are often endogenous to other unobservable factors. To overcome this concern, Giorcelli employed a unique research design to analyze the effects of the Marshall Plan’s transfer of US management and technology to Italian firms in the aftermath of WWII. 

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Giorcelli collected and digitized balance sheets data for 6,035 Italian firms eligible to receive the US management and technology support between 1930 to 1970. She then exploited an exogenous change in policy implementation that randomly determined which firms actually received Marshall Plan support. Preliminary results show that all firms that received either support significantly increased their productivity. Moreover, firms that received both sets of support simultaneously showed an additional increase in productivity, suggesting that management and technology are complementary in production. (Inset: The archives where Giorcelli conducted her research)

Kulick’s project, “Regionalism in Ukraine and the Long Collapse of the Soviet Union, 1954--2014,” used original historical evidence collected from Ukrainian archives to study the political nexus between party elites in Kiev and in Moscow. For example, Kulick gleaned insights about the political economy of postwar industrial reconstruction from local archives in Dnipropetrovsk, a metallurgical powerhouse in the region. Previously inaccessible primary sources indicate that as the Soviet economy grew more complex, the state apparatus became more independent. Consequently, managerial specialists needed more autonomy to meet deadlines and quotas, making them--rather than the party--the source of innovation in postwar Ukraine. 

According to Kulick, “my research this summer opened up new ways of thinking about the relationship between the party and the institutions that made up the Soviet state and economy.” Kulick used insights from Soviet-era KGB documents to shed new light on the current propaganda emanating out of the Kremlin. For example, she found that the long-term pull toward greater improvisation has had ongoing consequences. The current conflict is not just about Ukraine’s geopolitical orientation; it is also the byproduct of the dissolution of intransigent and poorly understood late Soviet-era institutions. (Inset: Kulick documents military mobilization during her summer in Ukraine)
 

Undergraduate Internship Program: Highlights

The Europe Center sponsored four undergraduate student internships with leading think tanks and international organizations in Europe in Summer 2014.  Laura Conigliaro (International Relations, 2015) joined the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), while Elsa Brown (Political Science, 2015), Noah Garcia (BA International Relations and MA Public Policy, 2015), and Jana Persky (Public Policy, 2016) joined Bruegel, a leading European think tank. Our featured student this month is Laura Conigliaro.

During her time at CEPS, Conigliaro worked on a 68-page research paper on genetically modified organisms (GMO) policy in the European Union. In the paper, she traces E.U. legislation and policy development on GMOs from 1990 onward, and also offers conclusions for the future trajectory of the E.U.’s GMO policy. Conigliaro argues that the evolution of the E.U.’s GMO policy is a topic of extreme relevance--and difficulty--because it is the source of high-level trade conflicts between Europe and the United States. Consequently, the study of GMO policymaking can help advance our understanding of E.U. institutions, E.U. “comitology” (policy process), and E.U.-U.S. bilateral relations. 

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Conigliaro plans to incorporate the summer fellowship experience into her Stanford academic career, for example, by presenting research findings at Stanford’s Symposia of Undergraduate Research and Public Service (SURPS). Looking ahead, she writes: “I hope to use the knowledge and experience gained of the E.U. Institutions and policy process through the lens of the GMO issue to broaden and diversify my potential career opportunities and areas from my traditional area of concentration, East Asia, to also include the European Union.”

Recap:  Panel on Europe-Russia Relations and EU expansion

On September 30, 2014, Miroslav Lajčák, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic, participated in a panel discussion in which he shared his thoughts and opinions about Europe’s relationship with Russia, and about the E.U.’s management of its future membership and associations. The Minister’s viewpoints were of particular interest, given his role in the E.U. foreign policy establishment, and the Slovak Republic’s role in the E.U. and NATO.

“The fact is that E.U.-Russia relations have worsened dramatically. That cannot be denied. But it’s not E.U. enlargement that played a major role in this.”  According to the Minister, Russia did not view E.U. enlargement with hostility, in part, because enlargement remained a transparent process. “But it all changed when Europe decided to enter into Russia’s immediate neighborhood...the former Soviet Republics. And this was something that

Miroslav Lajčák
was seen by Russia as a hostile activity, and this was what Russia fiercely resisted.” The Minister spoke candidly about the potential conflicts of concepts between the E.U.’s Eastern Partnership policy, Russia’s Near Abroad policy, and the idea of a Eurasian Union. A fundamental and ongoing source of tension pertains to the geopolitical position of Russia’s immediate neighbors: “The fact is that Russia never accepted the full sovereignty of the former Soviet Republics.” Apart from discussing the escalation of tensions between the E.U. and Russia, the Minister spoke about the role of sanctions and reforms as a path for moving forward and achieving lasting peace in Europe.

Minister Lajčák’s brought a variety of experiences to the panel. He served as the European Union Chief Negotiator for the E.U.-Ukraine and E.U.-Moldova Association Agreements, and was the European Union Special Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Sarajevo. Additionally, he was previously the Ambassador of the Slovak Republic to the Former Republic of Yugoslavia, Albania and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. 

After Minister Lajčák spoke, he was followed by comments by Michael McFaul, Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow, Hoover Institute and Freeman Spogli Institute; Norman Naimark, the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor in East European Studies in the History Department and The Director of Stanford Global Studies; and Kathryn Stoner, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute and Faculty Director of the Susan Ford Dorsey Program in International Studies.

Introducing “Immigration and Integration in Europe” Policy Lab

The Europe Center would like to introduce a new research project entitled, “Immigration and Integration in Europe:  A Public Policy Perspective,” led by Professors David Laitin and Jens Hainmueller. Duncan Lawrence has recently joined Stanford University to help direct the project. The project is part of the new Policy Implementation Lab at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

The social and economic integration of its diverse and ever growing immigrant populations is one of the most fundamental and pressing policy issues European countries face today. Success or failure in integrating immigrants is likely to have a substantial effect on the ability of European countries individually and collectively as members of the European Union to achieve objectives ranging from the profound such as sustaining a robust democratic culture to the necessary such as fostering economic cooperation between countries. Various policies have been devised to address this grave political dilemma, but despite heated public debates we know very little about whether these policies achieve their stated goals and actually foster the integration of immigrants into the host societies. (Inset: David Laitin)

Professor Jens Hainmueller.The goal of this research program is to fill this gap and create a network of leading immigration scholars in the US and Europe to generate rigorous evidence about what works and what does not when it comes to integration policies. The methodological core of the lab’s research program is a focus on systematic impact evaluations that leverage experimental and quasi-experimental methods with common study protocols to quantify the social and economic returns to integration policies across Europe, including polices for public housing, education, citizenship acquisition, and integration contracts for newcomers. This work will add to the quality of informed public debate on a sensitive issue, and create cumulative knowledge about policies that will be broadly relevant. (Inset: Jens Hainmueller)

The Europe Center Sponsored Events

We invite you to attend the following events sponsored or co-sponsored by The Europe Center:

Additional Details on our website
October 8-10, 2014
“War, Revolution and Freedom: the Baltic Countries in the 20th Century”
Stauffer Auditorium, Hoover Institution
9:00 AM onward

Save the Date
April 24-25, 2015
Conference on Human Rights

A collaborative effort between the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School (IHRCRC), the Research Center for Human Rights at Vienna University (RCHR), and The Europe Center. The conference will focus on the pedagogy and practice of human rights. 

Save the Date
May 20-22, 2015
TEC Lectureship on Europe and the World 
Joel Mokyr
Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Economics and History, Northwestern University

We welcome you to visit our website for additional details.

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Book Workshop: "Dilemmas of Inclusion: Votes, Values, and the Political Representation of Muslims in Europe" by Rafaela Dancygier

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Workshop on Rafaela Dancygier's latest book manuscript titled "Dilemmas of Inclusion: Votes, Values, and the Political Representation of Muslims in Europe." 

Discussants:

  • Chapter 1: David Laitin (Stanford)
  • Chapter 2:  Ken Scheve (Stanford)
  • Chapter 3:  Jonathan Rodden (Stanford)
  • Chapter 4: Anna Grzymala-Busse (University of Michigan)
  • Chapter 5:  Dan Posner (UCLA)
  • Chapter 6:  Thad Dunning (UC Berkeley)

Agenda:

  • 8:30am – 9:00am      Breakfast
  • 9:00am – 10:30am    Chapters 1 and 2
  • 10:30am – 11:00am  Coffee Break
  • 11:00am – 12:45pm  Chapters 3 and 4
  • 12:45am – 2:00pm    Lunch
  • 2:00pm – 3:45pm      Chapters 5 and 6
  • 3:45pm – 4:00pm      Coffee Break
  • 4:00pm – 4:30pm      Synthesis
  • 6:00pm - 8:00p         Dinner

Reuben Hills Conference Room
Encina Hall East, 2nd floor

Rafaela Dancygier Assistant professor, Politics and Public and International Affairs Participant Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University
Professor of political science and director of The Europe Center Discussant Stanford University

David Laitin

Department of Political Science
Stanford University
Encina Hall, W423
Stanford, CA 94305-6044

(650) 725-9556 (650) 723-1808
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James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science
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David Laitin is the James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science and a co-director of the Immigration Policy Lab at Stanford. He has conducted field research in Somalia, Nigeria, Spain, Estonia and France. His principal research interest is on how culture – specifically, language and religion – guides political behavior. He is the author of “Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-heritage Societies” and a series of articles on immigrant integration, civil war and terrorism. Laitin received his BA from Swarthmore College and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Affiliated faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center
James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science Discussant Stanford University

Jonathan Rodden

616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6044

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Professor of Political Science
Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR)
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Jonathan Rodden is professor of political science at Stanford, director of the Spatial Social Science Lab, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.  He has written several articles and a pair of books on federalism and fiscal decentralization, and continues to work on issues related to state and local government finance around the world.  His most recent work focuses on economic and political geography in North America, Europe, and beyond.  He published a book on the topic in 2019, entitled Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide. 

Rodden has several ongoing research projects with collaborators in Europe, including a new project on comparative federalism at the University of Salzburg.  He spent the winter of 2013 as a visiting scholar at the Juan March Institute in Madrid while also teaching in Stanford’s Madrid Bing Overseas Program.

Rodden received his PhD from Yale University and his BA from the University of Michigan, and was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Leipzig, Germany. Before joining the Stanford faculty, he was the Ford Associate Professor of Political Science at MIT. 

Rodden's research was featured in The Europe Center February 2018 Newsletter.

Director of the Spatial Social Science Lab
Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center
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Professor of political science, director of the Spatial Social Science Lab, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution Discussant Stanford University
Dan Posner James S. Coleman Professor of International Development, Department of Political Science Discussant UC Los Angeles
Thad Dunning Robson Professor of Political Science Discussant UC Berkeley
Anna Grzymala-Busse Ronald and Eileen Weiser Professor of European and Eurasian Studies in the Department of Political Science Discussant University of Michigan
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