Research

Dissertation Research and Book Manuscript

Extending Respectability Politics: The Impact of Intra-Group Attitudes on Political Behavior and Collective Mobilization for Latinxs, Asian Americans, and Women

How do respectability politics and norm enforcement impact political attitudes and individual and collective political behaviors within a marginalized group? My dissertation disentangles the unique processes by which Latinxs, Asians, and women are socialized into adherence to group norms, the impact on the identity-to-politics link, and the political consequences of this for these groups, group members who enforce these norms, and collective group mobilization at large. I define norm enforcement as the concern for and the policing of the behaviors of other group members in an effort to improve the group’s status in society. I argue that adherence to group norms is politically consequential within marginalized groups, and I defend this through a series of survey experiments, original interviews, and large-n observational studies.

Immigration Courts Research Agenda

Showing Up is the Hardest Part: Geographic Barriers to Immigration Court Access (Revise & Resubmit at Politics, Groups and Identities)
How might geographic burdens limit immigrants’ access to attend their court hearings? In this article, I use the administrative burdens framework to argue that challenging commutes exacerbate the lack of access to immigration court, leading to missed court hearings, and consequentially, near certain deportation orders. Using the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s case data from 2018 – 2022, I first leverage an exogenous COVID-19 policy shock which increased the rate of virtual hearings to identify an associated spike in the hearing attendance rate. I then move to an individual level analysis where I geocode and calculate each immigrant’s commute to the court finding that lengthier commutes, non-virtual hearings, and a lack of driver’s license eligibility all decrease the likelihood than an immigrant attends their hearing. My models predict that a shift to virtual hearings would increase the attendance rate by more than 6%, or over 9,000 immigrants each year.

Inequitable Immigration Court Assignments and their Consequences
How do immigration court location assignments impact the most vulnerable immigrants applying to remain in the U.S.? Applying the administrative burdens theory, I argue that immigration court officials, acting as bureaucratic agents, place increased burdens on certain immigrants with consequences that shape the admitted immigrant population. Using the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s hearings data from 2018 – 2022 and predicted court assignments scraped from the DOJ’s online zip code tool, I validate if each immigrant is assigned to the predicted hearing location or not. I find that asylum seekers are 10% more likely to be assigned to the wrong city and wrong state, and that those who speak English and have an attorney are considerably more likely to be assigned to the correct court location. This has considerable implications for shaping the immigrant population in the United States by increasing burdens on the most vulnerable immigrants.

Selected Co-authored Manuscripts

Garcia-Rios, Sergio, Ángel Saavedra Cisneros, and Miranda Sullivan. An Identity-Centric Approach to Latino Voter Choice: A Contextual Analysis of Political Identities. Under Review.

Carlos, Roberto, Vanessa Cruz Nichols, Miranda Sullivan, Allison Verrilli, Clinton Willbanks, Seung Wook Yoo, and Christopher Cassella. Drawing a Line in the Sand: Embarrassment and Latinx Support for Punitive Immigration Policies. Under Review.

Liu, Amy H., Meiying Xu, Seung Wook Ethan Yoo, Miranda Sullivan, Jeong Hyun Kim, Yesola Kweon, Keith Padraic Chew, and Jangai Jap. Shared Ethnicity, Broken Reciprocity: When Public Attitudes Turn Negative on Returning Coethnics. Un der Review.

Sullivan, Miranda, Alison Craig, Max Goplerud, Sean Theriault, Shruti Khandekar, and Eric Kim. Challenges and Strategies in Large-Scale Text Classification: Lessons from the Congressional Bills Project.

Epp, Derek, Allison Verrilli, Hannah Walker, and Miranda Sullivan. Exposure to Crime and Vote Switching in the 2024 Election.

Published Work

Farris, Emily M., Mirya R. Holman, and Miranda E. Sullivan. 2022. “Representation and Anti-Racist Policymaking in U.S. Cities during COVID-19.” Representation. DOI: 10.1080/00344893.2021.2017335

Sullivan, Miranda E. and David Leal. 2023. “Implementing Emergency Powers in Texas.” In Morris Fiorina (Ed.) Who Governs? Emergency Powers in the Time of COVID. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press.

Holman, Mirya R., Emily M. Farris and Miranda E. Sullivan. 2023. “Using the Emergency in Emergency Orders: Municipal Policy Action and Federalism during the COVID-19 Crisis.” In Morris Fiorina (Ed.) Who Governs? Emergency Powers in the Time of COVID. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press.