Job Market Paper:
Refugee Urban Shelters and Locals' Electoral Outcomes: Evidence from the Venezuelan Refugee Crisis in Northern Brazil (Draft Soon)
Abstract: Since 2014, one million Venezuelans have entered Brazil, and the border between the two countries in Roraima state has become the main entry point of an unprecedented migration flow. While many developing countries respond with isolated camps and limited protections, the Brazilian government granted comprehensive rights to Venezuelans, and urban refugee shelters were opened in Roraima's capital. This reception may, by increasing visibility, contact, and competition for resources, trigger locals' backlash, fueling social tensions and steering political decisions. This paper studies the electoral impacts of this modern refugee reception policy. I leverage the geographic concentration of the migration flow and the quasi-random placement of shelters near and far from polling stations to estimate a DiD. According to the results, the reception policy reshaped the within-city voting: proximity to shelters boosted support for far-right candidates while reducing votes for the incumbent. However, shelters' effects were not strong enough to increase the city's overall far-right performance. Moreover, the results are driven only by shelters hosting Venezuelan Indigenous people, an especially socioeconomically vulnerable subgroup of the refugee population. Analysis using public school data and UN reports suggests that locals' exposure to poverty and vulnerability, such as children outside of school, child labor, and homelessness, can be behind the results.
Funding: UC Davis College of Letters & Sciences Dean's Graduate Summer Support Award and UC Davis Global Affairs Grad Grants.
Presentations: 2025 ASSA Annual Conference; 2025 European Economic Association; 2025 All-California Labor Economics Conference; 2024 CEMIR Junior Economist Workshop; 9th Understanding Voluntary and Forced Migration Conference; 2024 Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) Immigration Papers Workshop
Working papers:
Refugees and Locals' Educational Outcomes: Evidence from the Venezuelan Refugee Crisis in Northern Brazil (with Gabriel Koraicho - Stanford)
Abstract: This paper examines how the arrival of school-age Venezuelan refugees affected local students’ educational outcomes in Boa Vista, Brazil. The city became the epicenter of Venezuelan migration, with the share of Venezuelan students rising from nearly 0\% in 2016 to 20\% in 2024. Using administrative data covering all public schools from 2010 to 2023, we construct a panel of schools and students. Estimating at the school level a 2SLS with distance to a refugee shelter as an instrument, we find a zero impact of Venezuelan enrollment on exam performance, retention, dropout, or change of school among Brazilian students. Results are confirmed when using within-school cross-grade comparisons from the student panel to estimate peer effects. By creating new classrooms and hiring teachers, the municipality kept class sizes and student–teacher ratios stable, which may explain the observed effects.
In addition, we partnered with the local government to obtain administrative data to evaluate the introduction of mandatory placement exams for Venezuelan children prior to school enrollment. In contexts where school documents are missing, language barriers exist, and children may have experienced long periods outside school, placement exams can help identify the appropriate grade for refugee students. We find, however, that the policy reduced the enrollment of refugee children within the targeted age group by about 1,000 students between 2020 and 2024. The main barriers were long waiting times to schedule the exam and difficulties in contacting families to inform the exam date and time, rather than Venezuelan families not registering their children on the waiting list.
Funding: UC Davis Global Affairs Grad Grants and UC Davis Economic Dept. Research Award 2023 and 2024
Presentations: Lemman Center at Stanford University (2024); UC Davis Global Migration Center (2023)
Work in Progress:
Bordering on Effectiveness: The Uneven Impact of Visa Policies (with Renan Chicarelli – Duke)
Abstract: This paper examines the effects of Mexico’s recent imposition of visa requirements on travelers from Brazil on both tourism inflows and irregular border crossings into the United States. The policy was introduced in response to rising numbers of migrants transiting through Mexico to reach the U.S.-Mexico border, and it aimed to better regulate entries from countries associated with increased migration flows. Using variation in the timing and rollout of the policy, we estimate its effects on two outcomes: (i) short-term tourism to Mexico and (ii) U.S. Border Patrol encounters at the southern border. Preliminary results show that the policy significantly reduced travel from Brazil, including tourism. Correspondingly, encounters of Brazilian nationals at the U.S.-Mexico border declined.
Funding: Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University (grant no. IHS019318)
Benefits on the Bench: Workfare, Mental Health, and the Role of the Team (with Remy Beauregard - UC Davis) - Slides
Abstract: Recent studies have found large positive effects of working compared to pure cash transfers on various measures of mental health for labor demand-constrained populations. We hypothesize that some such benefits could stem from belonging to and training with a team even if one is not ultimately selected to work, which we term as “being on the bench”. This study proposes a novel field experiment to investigate the effects of being placed on the bench by a randomized employment lottery for forcibly displaced Venezuelan migrants in Roraima, a Brazilian border state. This population is understood to have both high unemployment and job-seeking as well as poor mental health, making them both appropriate and necessary to study. As we expect these effects to operate through alignment with the meaningfulness or mission of work being trained for, we introduce variation in the meaningfulness of tasks offered. Similar to previous studies, we also include a cash transfer treatment arm and a pure control for comparison.
Presentations: Advances with Field Experiments 2025 Conference.
Impact of a Multi-level Intervention on Social Cohesion among Refugee and Host Communities in Uganda (with Susan Awor, CEGA fellow) - Slides
Abstract: Using data from 4,561 households in refugee-hosting districts of Uganda, we examine the relationship between a livelihood support intervention and social cohesion. The intervention was non-randomized and targeted toward vulnerable households through a participatory wealth ranking approach. The “poorest of the poor” category received cash for labor, while the “active poor” category received loans or grants. We hypothesize that livelihood support reduces competition over scarce resources and improves social relations within communities. The results show that participation in the intervention is associated with reduced land-related conflict. Moreover, conflict dynamics differ by household characteristics, with female-headed households and those with more school-age children more likely to report conflict. Residing in refugee settlements is associated with higher levels of land and general conflict. These findings contribute to the growing literature on interventions for peaceful coexistence among refugees and hosts, highlighting the role of targeted livelihood support.
Presentations: Devolpment Lunch UC Berkely (2025)