Rebecca Hamlin
Biographic Data
| ID | 192501 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rebecca Hamlin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rebecca |
| FAMILY NAME | Hamlin |
| SIGNATURE | HAMLIN R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Massachusetts Amherst |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7241-5024 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 72 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
It's Not the Economy: The Effect of Framing Arguments on Attitudes Toward Refugees
Which arguments for refugee admissions are most persuasive to publics in receiving states? Some refugee scholars and advocates insist that the way to maximize support for refugee admissions is to emphasize their instrumental economic benefit to receiving states. Others prefer arguments based in legal or moral obligations, arguing that economic arguments risk undermining support for the most vulnerable or needy refugees. In this article, we assess…
Reconfiguring Refugees: The U.S. Retreat from Responsibility Sharing by Alice Coen
Categories, binaries, and legibility in Ulrike Bialas' Forever 17
Response to Andrew S. Rosenberg’s Review of Crossing: How We Label and React to People on the Move
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the 'Save PDF' action button
Institutional analyses of refugee protection
This article uses empirical institutional studies to illustrate the ways in which institutional analyses help scholars to understand key features of refugee protection, such as discretion, interpretation, compliance, and advocacy. The ideals of international law must be implemented in practice by people on the ground, and those people are embedded in institutions. Sometimes these institutions are elements of a powerful administrative state and so…
Europe’s Migration Crisis: Border Deaths and Human Dignity
Introduction: The Politics of the Migrant/Refugee Binary
This introduction outlines the need for a Special Issue on the topic of the migrant/refugee binary, discusses the contributions of the six papers that make up the issue, and outlines an agenda for future research on this topic
Victim, perpetrator, neither: Attitudes on deservingness and culpability in immigration law
This study examines whether there is popular support for a restrictive immigration policy aimed at denying safe haven to human rights abusers and those affiliated with terrorism. We designed a public opinion survey experiment that asks respondents to evaluate whether low level or high-level Taliban members who otherwise qualify for refugee status deserve immigration benefits. We found that a majority of respondents did not immediately deny a visa…
Crossing: How We Label and React to People on the Move
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Trump’s Immigration Legacy
From the moment that he first announced his presidential candidacy until his final days in office, Donald Trump’s signature personal political cause was the restriction of immigration. Media coverage and public debate often focused on Trump’s rhetorical invocation of this issue and emphasized his opposition to undocumented immigration in particular, as symbolized by his famous proposal to build a wall across the southern border of the United Stat…
Refuge: Rethinking Refugee Policy in a Changing World
Political Asylum Deceptions: The Culture of Suspicion. By Carol Bohmer and Amy Shuman
Political Asylum Deceptions begins by pointing out a troubling paradox within refugee status determination. Because refugee status is assigned based on an individual’s account of their persecution, credibility is at the center of refugee law. However, it is often necessary to deceive to get oneself in a position where it is possible to seek asylum, which can undermine credibility. This deception might involve a bribe to get out of a dangerous sit…
The Politics of a New Legal Regime: Governing International Crime through Domestic Immigration Law
Through an analysis of a unique and understudied unit within the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Unit (HRVWCU, or “the Unit”), this article addresses the following theoretical and policy question: once someone has been admitted to the United States and granted permanent residency, or even citizenship, how does the law facilitate the reversal of that decision based on acts committed long ago and …
Immigration Judges and US Asylum Policy
In 2011, Ramji-Nogales, Schoenholtz, and Schrag published Refugee Roulette,1 a book that changed the academic conversation about refugee status determination (RSD) in the United States (US). Building on a previous law review article with the same name, the book amassed an extraordinary amount of data on asylum adjudications at every level of the American RSD regime, and demonstrated empirically what everyone familiar with the system had already s…
Foreign Criminals,” the Human Rights Act, and the New Constitutional Politics of the United Kingdom
Since the passage of the 1998 Human Rights Act, popular anxiety about increasing judicial power over immigration has led to a very public debate about the future of British constitutionalism. Drawing on an analysis of case law, 747 media articles, and interviews with human rights advocates, legal scholars, and government officials, I trace the development of a popular constitutionalism in the United Kingdom, fueled by resistance to international …
Political stories: Media narratives of political participation by Asian immigrants in the US and Canada
How is the political participation of Asian immigrant communities portrayed by local mainstream media? How does coverage vary over time, by immigrant group, and by host country? This article examines the civic presence of Indian and Vietnamese immigrants in Boston, San Jose, Toronto, and Vancouver from 1985 to 2005. We measure civic presence using a database of 224 articles from the primary newspaper of record in each city, representing a 10% ran…
Ideology, International Law, and the INS: The Development of American Asylum Politics 1948–Present
American asylum policy has developed gradually over many decades, which can be divided into five distinct eras. The relationships between the categories of refugee, asylum seeker, and undocumented immigrant have shifted frequently, and answers about which asylum seekers qualify for refugee status in the United States have been both politically constructed over time and contingent on the politics of the moment. Asylum seekers, therefore, have some…
Immigrants in the Media: Civic Visibility in the USA and Canada
We argue that scholars of immigrant integration should pay more attention to immigrants' 'civic visibility' among local government officials, organisations and other residents. To document and analyse immigrants' civic visibility, we examine coverage of the Vietnamese and Indian communities in newspapers in San Jose, Boston, Vancouver and Toronto from 1985 to 2005. We ask (i) do local newspapers cover the lives of immigrants and their descendants…
Let Me Be a Refugee: Administrative Justice and the Politics of Asylum in the United States, Canada, and Australia
Why do decision-makers in similar liberal democracies interpret the same legal definition in very different ways? International law provides states with a common definition of a refugee as well as guidelines outlining how asylum claims should be decided. Yet, the processes by which countries determine who should be granted refugee status look strikingly different, even across nations with many political, cultural, geographical, and institutional …
Illegal Refugees: Competing Policy Ideas and the Rise of the Regime of Deterrence in American Asylum Politics
Journal Article Illegal Refugees: Competing Policy Ideas and the Rise of the Regime of Deterrence in American Asylum Politics Get access Rebecca Hamlin Rebecca Hamlin * * Assistant Professor of Political Science, Grinnell College. The author would like to thank Irene Bloemraad, Victoria Brown, Eric Carter, Ming Hsu Chen, Albert Lacson, and Philip Wolgin, as well as the members of the University of California Berkeley Interdisciplinary Immigration…
International Law and Administrative Insulation: A Comparison of Refugee Status Determination Regimes in the United States, Canada, and Australia
International law provides nations with a common definition of a refugee, yet the processes by which countries determine who should be granted refugee status look strikingly different, even across nations with many institutional, cultural, geographical, and political similarities. This article compares the refugee status determination regimes of three popular asylum seeker destinations—the United States, Canada, and Australia. Despite these natio…
Symbolic Politics and Policy Feedback: The United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees and American Refugee Policy in the Cold War
Immigration scholars routinely overlook the 1968 U.S. Senate ratification of the United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, an international treaty defining a refugee in ideologically neutral terms. They dismiss this moment as symbolic because U.S. law continued to define a refugee as someone fleeing communism until the passage of the 1980 Refugee Act. We use archival documents, interview data, and court cases to argue that legal…
Introduction: The Politics of the Migrant/Refugee Binary
This introduction outlines the need for a Special Issue on the topic of the migrant/refugee binary, discusses the contributions of the six papers that make up the issue, and outlines an agenda for future research on this topic
Illegal Refugees: Competing Policy Ideas and the Rise of the Regime of Deterrence in American Asylum Politics
Journal Article Illegal Refugees: Competing Policy Ideas and the Rise of the Regime of Deterrence in American Asylum Politics Get access Rebecca Hamlin Rebecca Hamlin * * Assistant Professor of Political Science, Grinnell College. The author would like to thank Irene Bloemraad, Victoria Brown, Eric Carter, Ming Hsu Chen, Albert Lacson, and Philip Wolgin, as well as the members of the University of California Berkeley Interdisciplinary Immigration…
International Law and Administrative Insulation: A Comparison of Refugee Status Determination Regimes in the United States, Canada, and Australia
International law provides nations with a common definition of a refugee, yet the processes by which countries determine who should be granted refugee status look strikingly different, even across nations with many institutional, cultural, geographical, and political similarities. This article compares the refugee status determination regimes of three popular asylum seeker destinations—the United States, Canada, and Australia. Despite these natio…
Immigrants in the Media: Civic Visibility in the USA and Canada
We argue that scholars of immigrant integration should pay more attention to immigrants' 'civic visibility' among local government officials, organisations and other residents. To document and analyse immigrants' civic visibility, we examine coverage of the Vietnamese and Indian communities in newspapers in San Jose, Boston, Vancouver and Toronto from 1985 to 2005. We ask (i) do local newspapers cover the lives of immigrants and their descendants…
Symbolic Politics and Policy Feedback: The United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees and American Refugee Policy in the Cold War
Immigration scholars routinely overlook the 1968 U.S. Senate ratification of the United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, an international treaty defining a refugee in ideologically neutral terms. They dismiss this moment as symbolic because U.S. law continued to define a refugee as someone fleeing communism until the passage of the 1980 Refugee Act. We use archival documents, interview data, and court cases to argue that legal…
Ideology, International Law, and the INS: The Development of American Asylum Politics 1948–Present
American asylum policy has developed gradually over many decades, which can be divided into five distinct eras. The relationships between the categories of refugee, asylum seeker, and undocumented immigrant have shifted frequently, and answers about which asylum seekers qualify for refugee status in the United States have been both politically constructed over time and contingent on the politics of the moment. Asylum seekers, therefore, have some…
The Politics of a New Legal Regime: Governing International Crime through Domestic Immigration Law
Through an analysis of a unique and understudied unit within the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Unit (HRVWCU, or “the Unit”), this article addresses the following theoretical and policy question: once someone has been admitted to the United States and granted permanent residency, or even citizenship, how does the law facilitate the reversal of that decision based on acts committed long ago and …
Foreign Criminals,” the Human Rights Act, and the New Constitutional Politics of the United Kingdom
Since the passage of the 1998 Human Rights Act, popular anxiety about increasing judicial power over immigration has led to a very public debate about the future of British constitutionalism. Drawing on an analysis of case law, 747 media articles, and interviews with human rights advocates, legal scholars, and government officials, I trace the development of a popular constitutionalism in the United Kingdom, fueled by resistance to international …
Political stories: Media narratives of political participation by Asian immigrants in the US and Canada
How is the political participation of Asian immigrant communities portrayed by local mainstream media? How does coverage vary over time, by immigrant group, and by host country? This article examines the civic presence of Indian and Vietnamese immigrants in Boston, San Jose, Toronto, and Vancouver from 1985 to 2005. We measure civic presence using a database of 224 articles from the primary newspaper of record in each city, representing a 10% ran…
Categories, binaries, and legibility in Ulrike Bialas' Forever 17
Trump’s Immigration Legacy
From the moment that he first announced his presidential candidacy until his final days in office, Donald Trump’s signature personal political cause was the restriction of immigration. Media coverage and public debate often focused on Trump’s rhetorical invocation of this issue and emphasized his opposition to undocumented immigration in particular, as symbolized by his famous proposal to build a wall across the southern border of the United Stat…
Political Asylum Deceptions: The Culture of Suspicion. By Carol Bohmer and Amy Shuman
Political Asylum Deceptions begins by pointing out a troubling paradox within refugee status determination. Because refugee status is assigned based on an individual’s account of their persecution, credibility is at the center of refugee law. However, it is often necessary to deceive to get oneself in a position where it is possible to seek asylum, which can undermine credibility. This deception might involve a bribe to get out of a dangerous sit…
Illegal Refugees: Competing Policy Ideas and the Rise of the Regime of Deterrence in American Asylum Politics
Journal Article Illegal Refugees: Competing Policy Ideas and the Rise of the Regime of Deterrence in American Asylum Politics Get access Rebecca Hamlin Rebecca Hamlin * * Assistant Professor of Political Science, Grinnell College. The author would like to thank Irene Bloemraad, Victoria Brown, Eric Carter, Ming Hsu Chen, Albert Lacson, and Philip Wolgin, as well as the members of the University of California Berkeley Interdisciplinary Immigration…
International Law and Administrative Insulation: A Comparison of Refugee Status Determination Regimes in the United States, Canada, and Australia
International law provides nations with a common definition of a refugee, yet the processes by which countries determine who should be granted refugee status look strikingly different, even across nations with many institutional, cultural, geographical, and political similarities. This article compares the refugee status determination regimes of three popular asylum seeker destinations—the United States, Canada, and Australia. Despite these natio…
Symbolic Politics and Policy Feedback: The United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees and American Refugee Policy in the Cold War
Immigration scholars routinely overlook the 1968 U.S. Senate ratification of the United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, an international treaty defining a refugee in ideologically neutral terms. They dismiss this moment as symbolic because U.S. law continued to define a refugee as someone fleeing communism until the passage of the 1980 Refugee Act. We use archival documents, interview data, and court cases to argue that legal…
Let Me Be a Refugee: Administrative Justice and the Politics of Asylum in the United States, Canada, and Australia
Why do decision-makers in similar liberal democracies interpret the same legal definition in very different ways? International law provides states with a common definition of a refugee as well as guidelines outlining how asylum claims should be decided. Yet, the processes by which countries determine who should be granted refugee status look strikingly different, even across nations with many political, cultural, geographical, and institutional …
Political stories: Media narratives of political participation by Asian immigrants in the US and Canada
How is the political participation of Asian immigrant communities portrayed by local mainstream media? How does coverage vary over time, by immigrant group, and by host country? This article examines the civic presence of Indian and Vietnamese immigrants in Boston, San Jose, Toronto, and Vancouver from 1985 to 2005. We measure civic presence using a database of 224 articles from the primary newspaper of record in each city, representing a 10% ran…
Ideology, International Law, and the INS: The Development of American Asylum Politics 1948–Present
American asylum policy has developed gradually over many decades, which can be divided into five distinct eras. The relationships between the categories of refugee, asylum seeker, and undocumented immigrant have shifted frequently, and answers about which asylum seekers qualify for refugee status in the United States have been both politically constructed over time and contingent on the politics of the moment. Asylum seekers, therefore, have some…
Immigrants in the Media: Civic Visibility in the USA and Canada
We argue that scholars of immigrant integration should pay more attention to immigrants' 'civic visibility' among local government officials, organisations and other residents. To document and analyse immigrants' civic visibility, we examine coverage of the Vietnamese and Indian communities in newspapers in San Jose, Boston, Vancouver and Toronto from 1985 to 2005. We ask (i) do local newspapers cover the lives of immigrants and their descendants…
Immigration Judges and US Asylum Policy
In 2011, Ramji-Nogales, Schoenholtz, and Schrag published Refugee Roulette,1 a book that changed the academic conversation about refugee status determination (RSD) in the United States (US). Building on a previous law review article with the same name, the book amassed an extraordinary amount of data on asylum adjudications at every level of the American RSD regime, and demonstrated empirically what everyone familiar with the system had already s…
Foreign Criminals,” the Human Rights Act, and the New Constitutional Politics of the United Kingdom
Since the passage of the 1998 Human Rights Act, popular anxiety about increasing judicial power over immigration has led to a very public debate about the future of British constitutionalism. Drawing on an analysis of case law, 747 media articles, and interviews with human rights advocates, legal scholars, and government officials, I trace the development of a popular constitutionalism in the United Kingdom, fueled by resistance to international …
Political Asylum Deceptions: The Culture of Suspicion. By Carol Bohmer and Amy Shuman
Political Asylum Deceptions begins by pointing out a troubling paradox within refugee status determination. Because refugee status is assigned based on an individual’s account of their persecution, credibility is at the center of refugee law. However, it is often necessary to deceive to get oneself in a position where it is possible to seek asylum, which can undermine credibility. This deception might involve a bribe to get out of a dangerous sit…
The Politics of a New Legal Regime: Governing International Crime through Domestic Immigration Law
Through an analysis of a unique and understudied unit within the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Unit (HRVWCU, or “the Unit”), this article addresses the following theoretical and policy question: once someone has been admitted to the United States and granted permanent residency, or even citizenship, how does the law facilitate the reversal of that decision based on acts committed long ago and …
Refuge: Rethinking Refugee Policy in a Changing World
Crossing: How We Label and React to People on the Move
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Trump’s Immigration Legacy
From the moment that he first announced his presidential candidacy until his final days in office, Donald Trump’s signature personal political cause was the restriction of immigration. Media coverage and public debate often focused on Trump’s rhetorical invocation of this issue and emphasized his opposition to undocumented immigration in particular, as symbolized by his famous proposal to build a wall across the southern border of the United Stat…
Institutional analyses of refugee protection
This article uses empirical institutional studies to illustrate the ways in which institutional analyses help scholars to understand key features of refugee protection, such as discretion, interpretation, compliance, and advocacy. The ideals of international law must be implemented in practice by people on the ground, and those people are embedded in institutions. Sometimes these institutions are elements of a powerful administrative state and so…
Europe’s Migration Crisis: Border Deaths and Human Dignity
Introduction: The Politics of the Migrant/Refugee Binary
This introduction outlines the need for a Special Issue on the topic of the migrant/refugee binary, discusses the contributions of the six papers that make up the issue, and outlines an agenda for future research on this topic
Victim, perpetrator, neither: Attitudes on deservingness and culpability in immigration law
This study examines whether there is popular support for a restrictive immigration policy aimed at denying safe haven to human rights abusers and those affiliated with terrorism. We designed a public opinion survey experiment that asks respondents to evaluate whether low level or high-level Taliban members who otherwise qualify for refugee status deserve immigration benefits. We found that a majority of respondents did not immediately deny a visa…
Response to Andrew S. Rosenberg’s Review of Crossing: How We Label and React to People on the Move
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the 'Save PDF' action button
Reconfiguring Refugees: The U.S. Retreat from Responsibility Sharing by Alice Coen
Categories, binaries, and legibility in Ulrike Bialas' Forever 17
It's Not the Economy: The Effect of Framing Arguments on Attitudes Toward Refugees
Which arguments for refugee admissions are most persuasive to publics in receiving states? Some refugee scholars and advocates insist that the way to maximize support for refugee admissions is to emphasize their instrumental economic benefit to receiving states. Others prefer arguments based in legal or moral obligations, arguing that economic arguments risk undermining support for the most vulnerable or needy refugees. In this article, we assess…
Political science (19 works) · Law (16 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Migration, Refugees, and Integration (15 works) · Law (14 works) · Politics (13 works) · Refugee (12 works) · Immigration (9 works) · Criminology (7 works) · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography (5 works)