Hello! I am a sociologist working at the intersection of migration, social policy, and institutional theory. My research focuses on inequality, refugee integration, and the role institutions play in shaping people’s educational, professional, and social futures.
Using refugee integration as a critical empirical site, I study how welfare institutions, migration policies, and frontline practices influence which opportunities become realistically accessible and sustainable over time. My work examines these dynamics across multiple levels: from the lived experiences and aspirations of refugees navigating educational and vocational pathways, to the moral dilemmas faced by street-level bureaucrats and social workers, and the broader policy structures that organise unequal futures across migration and welfare systems. My forthcoming book, Refugee Aspirations and Institutions: Governing Low Ambition in Comparative Perspective, examines how integration systems influence the futures refugees are encouraged, able, or expected to pursue.
I completed my doctorate at the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP), University of Lausanne, where my research focused on the educational and occupational aspirations of refugees in Switzerland and Canada. I am currently a Senior Researcher at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland (HES-SO), School of Social Work Fribourg, contributing to international research projects on migration and transnational caregiving. My recent work on transnational care examines how prolonged displacement, vulnerability, gendered responsibilities, and legal uncertainty reshape care practices, identities, and future-making across borders among Syrian and Venezuelan migrants living through protracted humanitarian crises.
Methodologically, I primarily work with qualitative and comparative approaches, including life-course interviews, process tracing, vignette-based methods, and participatory approaches such as body mapping, with a growing interest in longitudinal approaches to study how aspirations, opportunities, and constraints evolve over time across institutional contexts.
I am also co-editing an upcoming special issue for the Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies on Ethical Dilemmas in Migration and Integration Governance: Between Frontline Structures, Everyday Encounters and Migrant Aspirations.
I regularly review for journals including International Migration Review, Journal of International Migration and Integration, International Journal of Intercultural Relations, Journal of Vocational Education & Training, and Comparative Migration Studies.