I am an Associate Professor in the Policy, Politics and Society team at the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Erasmus University Rotterdam. My research lies at the intersection of social stratification, migration, and public policy. I examine how institutional contexts interact with individual resources to shape inequalities across national, local, and organizational contexts.
My current research develops three interrelated lines. The first examines how asylum, reception, and integration policies, together with local opportunity structures, shape refugees’ skills, labor-market outcomes, and institutional experiences. The second focuses on how organizational and frontline processes contribute to inequalities, examining caseworker decisions about access to active labor-market measures and employers’ responses to immigrants’ participation in these programs. The third takes a comparative institutional perspective, examining how national policy and institutional arrangements interact with individual resources to shape ethnic and gender inequalities across European labor markets.
Across these lines, my research links macro-level institutions to the organizations and actors through which policies are implemented and to the individuals whose opportunities they shape. I use longitudinal and comparative data, survey experiments, and quasi-experimental designs, with a particular interest in estimating policy and institutional effects and identifying the mechanisms through which they operate. My work has been published in journals including Social Forces, European Sociological Review, Governance, Sociological Science, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and International Migration Review.
Current Research Projects
Re-integratie: Vakkundig aan het werk – Laaggeletterdheid als barrière voor participatie?
Co-PI and co-supervisor with Menno Fenger | ZonMw
Examines whether and how low literacy constitutes a barrier to labor-market (re-)participation.
PhD candidate: Leone Verweij (2022–)
Integration Activities for Improving Refugees’ Position in the Labor Market
PI and supervisor | NWO SSH Open Competition M
Examines how caseworkers and employers shape refugees’ access to labor-market integration measures and the outcomes of participation in these programs.
Postdoctoral researchers: Sheeling Neo (2023–2024), Ids Baalbergen (2024–)
Settle-First and Work-First: Policy and Refugees’ Labor-Market Outcomes
Co-supervisor with Jaco Dagevos (EUR/SCP) and Mieke Maliepaard (WODC)
Examines how different approaches to refugee labor-market policy shape the labor-market outcomes of recent Syrian and Ukrainian refugees in the Netherlands and Germany.
PhD candidate: Ben van Enk (2023–)
Dilemmas of Street-Level Policymaking: Working in the Context of Superdiverse Neighborhoods
Co-PI and co-supervisor with Mark van Ostaijen and Peter Scholten | ESSB Starter Grant
Examines how frontline policy workers navigate decision-making dilemmas in superdiverse urban neighborhoods.
PhD candidate: Manou Gomlich (2024–)
Contesting Implementation: Citizen Perceptions of Government Responses to Supranational Policies
Co-PI and co-supervisor with Asya Zhelyazkova | ESSB Starter Grant
Examines how citizens perceive and evaluate government responses to implementing contested EU policies.
Postdoctoral researcher: Thijs Lindner (2024–)
Family Networks and Childcare Choices
Co-supervisor with Tom Emery
Examines how family networks shape childcare choices using whole-population administrative data.
PhD candidate: Nicolás Soler (2023–)