Attitudes toward inequality and redistributive demands
Across the world, socio-economic disparities are growing. Nevertheless, popular demands to curb such unprecedented inequality do not necessarily always follow. Understanding when and why people come to oppose large gaps between poor and rich has proven to be a complex endeavor that is nevertheless crucial to be able to provide societal solutions to our increasingly unequal world.
"Natural Disasters and Preferences for Redistribution: The Impact of Collective and Abrupt Disruptions." European Sociological Review (2022).
This study investigates the impact on redistributive preferences of one pervasive yet underexplored type of shock: natural disasters. Previous research has focused on smaller, endogenous shocks that do not share two key features of disasters: they are abrupt and collective experiences. The literature on economic shocks suggests they lead to increased demand for redistribution. Nevertheless, disasters are such abrupt ruptures that they could inhibit an increase in demand for redistribution because they may trigger psychological needs to justify the status quo. Further, their collective nature may push people to substitute government-based help for community or religious-based social insurance. In light of these conflicting accounts, I argue that how surprising a disaster is determines whether it is a deterrent or a catalyst of support for redistribution. To test my argument, I link World Values Survey data to information on subnational risk to natural disasters and find that risk of surprising disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis increases demand for redistribution but risk of predictable disasters does not. The relationship is robust to controlling for a series of individual and sub-national district characteristics. An event study of earthquake incidence shows a similar pattern: more surprising earthquakes—those impacting rarely hit districts—drive increases in demand for redistribution.
Winner of the 2023 "Best article of the year" prize granted jointly by the European Consortium of Sociological Research (ECSR) and the European Sociological Review
"Natural disasters and redistributive demands: evidence from a major earthquake" Revised & Resubmitted at Socio-economic Review.
Inequality is on the rise but demand for redistribution is not. Could disasters induced by natural hazards turn this trend around? I exploit variation in exposure to Japan’s 2011 earthquake in combination with a representative panel. I argue natural hazards are unlike other shocks because they force close experiences with socio-economic others and the rich are less likely to be antagonized due to a generalized perception that such disasters are due to forces of nature. My framework leads to different expectations than explanations based on pure self-interest or awareness about the role of luck in life. I expect close interactions with socio-economic others to increase preferences to redistribute to the poor via increased social affinity but the lack of antagonization of higher incomes to inhibit demands to ‘soak the rich’. Results are consistent with my framework and have important implications for our understanding of how catastrophes, set to become more common due to climate change, shape demand for redistribution in the 21st century.
"The relevance of fairness perceptions for redistributive preferences increases with income", with Jonne Kamphorst, Battu Balaraju and Arnout van de Rijt, Arnout. Revised & Resubmitted at Social Science Research.
Contemporary democratic nations sustain substantial net income inequality despite those with below-average earnings having a majority vote on issues of redistribution. A leading explanation is that inequality is acceptable to people if they find society meritocratic. Here we argue that how meritocratic a society is perceived to be has relatively little impact on the poor's support for redistribution, for two reasons: First, fairness considerations are a luxury the poor cannot afford. Second, being poor because of one's own shortcomings is more hurtful than being unlucky. We test our argument using three cross-national surveys and a preregistered experiment. Analysis of the survey data confirm the proposed interaction effect between income and perceived fairness on support for redistribution. In the experiment we exogenized income and fairness, which are endogenous in the survey evidence. Experimental results confirm the correlational findings of the surveys, showing that only the rich condition their redistributive preferences on fairness: They choose to share less if they believe their greater earnings are deserved. The poor redistribute the same amount to themselves irrespective of their meritocratic beliefs. Our findings suggest that any significant shift in support for redistribution in liberal democracies is more likely to come from a change in fairness perceptions by those whose material interests are to oppose it than by those who stand to gain from it.
Migration aspirations and decisions
Migration gets considerable attention in the media and public discourse and yet more often than not portrayals engage in inaccurate generalizations. For instance, despite common media portrayals of migration as an 'invasion' spiraling out of control, migration has consistently been part of human societies since the beginning of our species. Even though it is a rather old phenomenon, social science still has much to do to advance our scientific understanding of the complex and evolving reasons why people decide to migrate. Studying these decisions helps us paint a more nuanced picture of migration, better identify the challenges it may pose to policy as well as better understand the characteristics and needs of populations on the move.
Pañeda-Fernández, I., & Meierrieks, D. (2025). Climate disasters and individual migration aspirations: evidence from Senegal and the Gambia. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 1-27.
How do climate disasters shape migration? The existing evidence presents conflicting and inconclusive findings. To address this question, we theorise the cognitive processes guiding migration decisions in the wake of disasters. On the one hand, the link between climate disasters and migration aspirations may be driven by sudden-onset (e.g. heavy rains, storms and landslides) rather than gradual-onset events (e.g. droughts) because the devastating effect of the former may be easier to perceive. On the other hand, gradual climate disasters may be more influential because they can be perceived as more irreversible given their protracted nature. To test our hypotheses, we analyse original survey data from a representative sample of 5,700 individuals in Senegal and the Gambia. We show that individual perceptions of past climate disasters predict higher migration aspirations, a result robust to controlling for objective past climate conditions. On closer inspection, we show that only individuals with experience with gradual-onset events report higher migration aspirations, while experience with sudden-onset events has no comparable effect. Consistent with our regression analysis, results from an embedded survey experiment show that informational cues about future climate stress only impact the migration aspirations of individuals which have experienced gradual-onset weather events in the past.
Press: eldiario.es
"Do climate change and climate disasters at home shape return migration intentions? Evidence from a survey of West Africans in Germany" with Daniel Meierrieks. Under Review [Working Paper]
This study explores the role of climate conditions in shaping return migration intentions among international migrants. Using original survey data of over 1,000 first-generation migrants from West Africa living in Germany, we correlate observational data on temperature increases in the respondents' home regions in West Africa to their return migration intentions. Moreover, by means of a survey experiment, we investigate how informational cues about climate disasters in the migrants' origin countries might influence their desire to return home. We find that observed climate change in the form of warming does not affect return migration intentions, and neither do informational cues about climate risks that are provided in the survey experiment. Moreover, we find that differences in migrants' socioeconomic status, education or attachment to their home countries do not moderate the influence of climate change and disasters on return intentions. By contrast, in the survey experiment economic factors are found to play a decisive role: migrants are more inclined to return if job prospects in their home country improve, whereas favorable employment in Germany reduces return intentions. This latter finding provides some evidence that economic motivations rather than environmental concerns prominently shape return migration decisions.
"Gender inequality and female migration intentions in Africa". Draft available upon request.
Gender inequality is a pervasive global problem yet its role in shaping primary female migration remains poorly understood. This question is important because migration selection patterns can generate self-reinforcing dynamics with significant implications for development outcomes. While some studies suggest that greater inequality heightens incentives for women to migrate, others argue the opposite. That is, narrowing inequality facilitates migration by reducing social sanctions and expanding women’s aspirations for a better life. This paper investigates the relationship between the status of women and their migration intentions in Africa through four complementary strategies. First, I exploit two plausibly exogenous variations in the status of women in society at the individual level. The first one is within-country differences in matrilineal versus patrilineal kinship systems and the second one is within-ethnic group variation in female property rights stemming from colonial legal systems. These analyses show that lower status of women increases female migration intentions. Next, I use original surveys from Senegal, Gambia, and Nigeria, I show experiences of stark gender inequality (gender-based violence) correlate with migration intentions but not experiences of milder forms such as gender discrimination. Finally, an embedded survey experiment shows that gender equality at destination matters more for women with stark experiences of gender inequality.
Biases and discrimination toward immigrants
Immigrants and their descendants usually face significant challenges in the destination countries. Understanding the biases and discrimination they face is an important step to be able to build fairer societies.
"Teacher Bias in Assessment by Student Ascribed Status: A Factorial Experiment on Discrimination and Cultural Reproduction", Sociological Science (2024), with Carlos Gil-Hernández, Leire Salazar, and Jonathan Castaño. [Working paper]
Fair evaluations are fundamental for equal opportunity, with teachers as gatekeepers of academic merit in educational systems. Still, identifying their direct role in reproducing or mitigating inequalities via assessments is empirically challenging, yielding inconsistent findings on teacher bias from observational and experimental studies. We test interdisciplinary theories of status characteristics beliefs, statistical discrimination, and cultural reproduction with a pre-registered factorial experiment run on a large representative sample of Spanish pre-service teachers (n=1,717). This design causally identifies, net of true academic competence, the impact of student-ascribed status characteristics—gender, migrant and class origins—and cultural capital on teacher short- and long-term assessments, improving prior studies’ limitations regarding theory testing, confounding, and power. Findings reveal teacher bias in an immediate task of essay grading favoring girls and highbrow cultural capital signals, aligning with status characteristics and cultural reproduction theories, respectively. Concerning teachers’ long-term expectations, findings hint at statistical discrimination against boys, migrant-origin, and working-class students under uncertain information. Unexpectedly, ethnic discrimination changes from teachers favoring native origin in long-term expectations to migrant origin in essay evaluations, suggesting compensatory grading practices. These findings dig deeper into the complex roots of discrimination in teacher assessments as a mechanism underlying educational (in)equality.
Press coverage: El Confidencial (newspaper), eldiario.es (newspaper), Cadena SER (radio), La Sexta (TV), abc (newspaper)
"Attributional processes and perceived discrimination: evidence from West Africans in Germany". Draft available upon request.
Emerging evidence suggests the existence of the so-called integration paradox: socially integrated and economically advantaged immigrants report higher levels of discrimination than those that are more marginalized. While this could be explained via the former having more contact with natives and thus more negative encounters, another potential explanation operates via attributional processes if immigrants with higher socio-economic attainment and social integration are more likely to interpret events through the lens of discrimination. An important limitation of prior research to test this attributional mechanism is that the literature is mostly based on survey data where respondents are asked how often they felt discriminated against in the past year. Without an ability to keep the event and the characteristics of the migrant constant, the attributional processes that may be at play remain poorly understood. In this paper, I use experimental methods to overcome these shortcomings. A representative sample of West Africans in Germany evaluated vignettes of a hypothetical migrant where gender, migration status, religion, skin color, and socio-economic origin were randomized. Respondents then judged whether discrimination was at play in two ambiguous scenarios in the labor and housing markets. Results show little systematic attention to individual vignette attributes. In hiring, respondents were more likely to see discrimination when the vignette migrant was female, but not when they were Black or Muslim. In housing, attributes did not matter. Turning to integration trajectories, I find no evidence for an integration paradox. Immigrants with higher socio-economic status were no more likely to perceive discrimination, and those more socially integrated were less likely to do so. I interpret the lack of recognition of the markers of disadvantage that make discrimination more likely (being black or Muslim) and the lack of an “integration paradox” as potentially explained via theories of self-protection –immigrants lower their perceived discrimination as a self-protection mechanism to facilitate integration – or self-selection – those perceiving less discrimination self-select into better German skills and engaging in closer contact with natives.
"Does exposure to migrant-origin celebrities in national football teams affect societal prejudice and xenophobia?" With Leonie Ludwig. In Preparation
What is the effect of football on xenophobia? Prior research has established mixed findings on the extent to which this game creates social cohesion or a racist backlash. We contribute to this question by considering whether exposure to migrant-origin and visible minority celebrity players shapes the impact of the "beautiful game" on societal prejudice and xenophobia. To this end, we first use onomastic techniques and facial recognition tools to classify the share of players in the squads of the football national teams of 27 European countries from 2002 to 2020. In a second step, we compare respondents of the European Social Survey (ESS) surveyed right before and right after their national team plays a competitive match, allowing for the effect to vary depending on different measures of team diversity. Finally, we zoom in to the cases of Germany and the UK and investigate the effect of the interaction between national team football matches and team composition on the incidence of hate crimes.
"Representing the Nation: How Immigrant Descent, Appearance and Accent Shape Symbolic Inclusion", with Anna Skarpelis and Berenike Firestone. Research design.
Who gets to represent the nation? In an age marked by migration, ethnic diversity and rising far-right politics, this question about shifting notions of national identity has taken on renewed urgency. Our project investigates how immigrants and their descendants transition from being seen as outsiders to being accepted as symbols of national belonging. While citizenship laws may change and economic integration may advance, symbolic inclusion, or being recognized as someone who represents the nation, remains elusive for many. Through a novel mixed-methods approach that blends qualitative interviews with an innovative conjoint experiment using both visual and auditory cues, our study aims to uncover barriers to representation in Germany. That is, the often invisible racial, religious, and linguistic boundaries that shape who is perceived as a legitimate representative of the nation. By asking not who belongs, but who best represents, we access deeper social hierarchies of inclusion—revealing how national identity is not just granted, but selectively bestowed.