My research asks how people make lives across borders, and how states, media and institutions shape what those lives can look like. I work comparatively and across disciplines. I draw on interviews, media analysis and, more recently, participatory methods.
Current project
Migrant Women in the Swedish Labour Market: What Can We Learn from the Experiences of Ukrainians and Syrians? (Forte, 2024–)
This project compares Ukrainian and Syrian women entering work in Sweden. I lead it as co-PI with Nahikari Irastorza and Svitlana Babenko.
Research themes
Refugees, media and bureaucracy
How are refugees talked about, and how are they treated? I have compared newspaper coverage of Syrian refugees in Sweden, Jordan and Turkey. That work traces how refugees are racialized and how religion shapes their image.
Key works: Refugees and the Violence of Welfare Bureaucracies in Northern Europe (with Nina Gren and Martin Joormann, Manchester University Press, 2020); a special issue on Refugees and Bureaucratic Violence in Refuge (with Nina Gren and Martin Joormann, 2023); “How Capital Shapes Refugees’ Access to the Labour Market” (with Akram Al Ariss, International Journal of Human Resource Management, 2023).
Middle Eastern diasporas
How do immigrants build community, keep ties to home and develop cosmopolitan outlooks? My work on Lebanese immigrants in New York, Montreal and Paris showed how diasporic identities form across several cities at once.
Key works: The Lebanese Diaspora (NYU Press, 2011); The Routledge Handbook of Middle Eastern Diasporas (with Ramy Aly, 2022).
Children of immigrants and integration
How do young people with immigrant parents define success, and how do schools and labour markets shape their chances? Comparing the United States, France and Germany shows that discrimination produces strikingly similar experiences in very different systems. This work continues in Learning to Labor, Learning to Succeed: The Children of Immigrants in a Comparative Perspective, funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (2023). I have also called for rethinking “integration” itself, as a process that runs in more than one direction.
Key works: “Perceptions of Success among Working-Class Children of Immigrants in Three Cities” (with Amy Lutz, Ethnicities, 2022); the special issue Re-Envisioning Immigrant Integration (with Ov Cristian Norocel, Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies, 2022–23).
Women and social change in the Arab world
I study women’s public roles in Egypt and the Gulf. This includes their leadership in government and business, their part in political mobilization, and how Islam, local traditions and global ideals interact as gender roles change.
Water and hydrosolidarity
In interdisciplinary teams at Lund’s Pufendorf Institute, I have explored how nationalism and cooperation collide in managing the Nile. I would like to continue this line of work, but time is always scarce.
Key work: “The Nile and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam” (with many co-authors, Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education, 2015).
