Maureen Eger

Research supported by the Swedish Research Council @vetenskapsradet.bsky.social Grant No. 2019-02996. We also acknowledge the institutional support of Umeå University and @casbsstanford.bsky.social

What is the liberalizing potential of higher education? In this @bjsociology.bsky.social research, we show substantial variation in the association between field of study and anti-immigrant sentiment — a pattern most pronounced among those with tertiary degrees doi.org/10.1111/1468...

Apply for a 2026-27 academic year CASBS residential fellowship. Deadline: Oct 31, 2025

Much more info & link to application portal: casbs.stanford.edu/apply-casbs-...

Watch former fellows talk about it in their own words in a suite of 17 short, awesome videos: casbs.stanford.edu/apply-casbs-...

Immigrants help keep California’s $4T economy running.

Trump’s mass raids and stripping people of legal status risk tearing it apart — gutting our workforce and raising costs for everyone while separating American families.

End these senseless policies now, Donald Trump.

NEW PAPER! We look at immigrant criminality from the perspective of victims. Criminals tend to victimize the people in their community. If immigrants are setting off a crime wave, immigrants would be their 1st victims. Do we see that... no! Just the opposite... 🧵 www.cato.org/policy-analy...

Actually, Slavery Was Very Bad The president’s latest criticism of museums is a thinly veiled attempt to erase Black history.

I debated writing this. It can feel tempting, upon encountering yet another instance of this administration’s racism, to let it be. How many ways can you say the same thing over and over again? And yet we have to write it down, if for nothing else, so those who come after us know we were against it.

What is the Liberalizing Potential of Higher Education? An Analysis of Academic Fields and Anti‐Immigrant Sentiment Across 32 Countries The link between educational attainment and attitudes towards out-groups stands out as one of the most consistent statistical associations in the social and political sciences. However, a recent anal...

Two recently published studies show that individuals who studied humanities or art subjects are more socially liberal than those with degrees in other fields.

1) @maureeneger.bsky.social, @heypaolo.bsky.social &Mikael Hjerm (2025) in @bjsociology.bsky.social: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Does higher ed liberalize sentiments about immigrants? Using survey data across 32 countries, CASBS fellow @maureeneger.bsky.social & coauthors reveal substantial variation in the assoc b/w field of study & anti-immigrant prejudice

👉 @bjsociology.bsky.social: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

California, 17 other states challenge 'suspicionless' stops by masked ICE agents in L.A. California and a coalition of 17 other states have backed a lawsuit calling for an end to unconstitutional immigration stops in Los Angeles.

California, 17 other states challenge 'suspicionless' stops by masked ICE agents in L.A.

Think the Medicaid cuts don't affect you? Think again. : It's Been a Minute Republicans have passed President Trump's One Big, Beautiful bill, but is it built on bad faith stereotypes? The legislation guts funding for Medicaid, and for a long time Republicans have been attack...

Me & @joanalker1.bsky.social on @npr.org's "It's Been a Minute" talking about the erroneous stereotypes that drive Medicaid cuts & the fundamental connections between all of us. When we harm those whom government deems "underserving," we ultimately harm everyone.
www.npr.org/2025/07/04/1...

Ethnic preferences, opportunity structures, and the school segregation process Abstract. Previous research has shown that parents often have strong ethnicity-related school preferences, and it has been suggested that these preferences

@selcanmutgan.bsky.social et al. find that ethnic school segregation in Sweden is largely a downstream consequence of “the ethnic segregation of the housing market and the geographic distribution of schools.” @europeansocreview.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1093/esr/...

How Europe Got Tough on Migration

Europe’s neo-nationalist turn

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/29/w...

Identifying varieties of nationalism: A critique of a purely inductive approach Most theoretical and empirical approaches to nationalism not only distinguish between ethnic and civic notions of national belonging but also differentiate national identity from national hubris, pri...

Not just psychology! Our critique of a LCA analysis and its interpretation:

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

And our reply to the original authors’ response to our critique:

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirec...

Mine too! bsky.app/profile/rrre...
Thanks @kai-arzheimer.com for sharing previous work

I love when the radical right research robot @kai-arzheimer.com shares my brilliant Umeå University colleague’s work

All of L.A. is not a ‘war zone.’ We separate facts from spin and disinformation amid immigration raids What's actually happening during the ICE sweeps and protests across Los Angeles.

7. Bottom line: tactics matter but so do our own biases when observing and reacting to resistance. Worth approaching coverage with skepticism and holding media accountable.
www.latimes.com/california/s...

An important piece from the @apsrjournal.bsky.social (by @devorahmanekin.bsky.social and @tmitts.bsky.social) to make sense of ongoing events: it matters not only which tactics are adopted by protesters but also who they are.

Trump’s revenge spree on Harvard echoes well beyond education | Jan-Werner Müller Attacks on the university make clear that the administration will wield its power against anyone who incurs its displeasure

"...university leaders have to explain to a larger public how Trumpists, in an unprecedented spree of national self-destruction, are busy preventing cancer cures, damaging American soft power, and killing one of the country’s major exports, namely higher education."

These various initiatives and policy changes are often regarded as discrete problems, but they comprise a unified assault. The Trump administration has launched a comprehensive attack on knowledge itself, a war against culture, history, and science. If this assault is successful, it will undermine Americans’ ability to comprehend the world around us. Like the inquisitors of old, who persecuted Galileo for daring to notice that the sun did not, in fact, revolve around the Earth, they believe that truth-seeking imperils their hold on power.

The Trump administration is engaging on an all-out assault on the institutions, workers and standards that make learning and knowledge production possible, in the hopes of securing political dominance forever. (Gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

When the government cancels your research grant, here’s what you can do The mass cancellation of US federal grants marks yet another escalation in political interference in science, but there are ways to keep crucial research going.

So your research area has been politicized and your federal funding cancelled, what now? I try to give some answers in this opinion piece for @nature.com 1/

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Cato has published my comprehensive review of the ~240 Venezuelans the US government renditioned 2 months ago to Salvador’s notorious prison. We identified FIFTY who came legally, never violated any immigration law, but are imprisoned at the US government’s request and at US taxpayer expense.

The Real Threat of the Nonprofit “Terrorism” Provision in Trump’s Big Bill The Trump administration has already wielded the “terrorist” label to stigmatize and strip rights from student activists and migrants.

“…branding marginalized communities and their political opponents ‘terrorists’ is a surefire way to delegitimize them and diminish their capacity to dissent—and even to exist” warns @ssinnar.bsky.social

slate.com/news-and-pol...

Separately, migration & climate change are among the most politically polarized issues. But they interrelate across a variety of contexts. This enabled @maureeneger.bsky.social to widen the scope of inquiry in her CASBS fellows seminar, including reappraising mechanisms underlying existing theories

NIH guts its first and largest study centered on women The Women’s Health Initiative has produced numerous influential findings

Is this what he meant by “protecting women”?

NIH guts its first and largest study centered on women | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

So true. US universities are top notch, and magnets for talent that strengthen the US economy, *because* the US made a policy decision to invest in research.

What the gov’t really does is run a competition to let university scientists compete for grant funding to do research that helps society.

We theorized about such patterns in this open access article published online in 2020—arguing that these post-pandemic spikes in migration would increase anti-immigrant sentiment and mobilize political support for reintroducing restrictive migration policies
doi.org/10.1177/0197...

These data also show the impact of COVID-19 border closures on international migration and the post-pandemic spike in immigrant destinations all over the world

Opinion | To Understand Global Migration, You Have to See It First (Gift Article) These estimates, drawn from the location data of three billion Facebook users, provide a view of human migration in extraordinary detail.

Beautiful visualization of social media data and trends largely comport with international migration scholarship www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

The Conservative Activist Pushing Trump to Attack U.S. Colleges Christopher Rufo has helped inspire Republican messaging and bills on hot-button issues.

Today the NY Times posted an interview with Chris Rufo that anyone associated with universities — or anyone who benefits from advances in health care or any other aspect of the research taking place there — should listen to or read in transcript.

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/p...?