I am a political and social data scientist and Assistant Professor in Public Policy at the School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University. I study how governments design migration and asylum policy, what those policies do to the people they target, and how well democratic institutions represent the people they serve.
My work on migration focuses on Latin America, especially Venezuelan displacement, and increasingly on Europe and the UK. I have documented that Latin America liberalised its asylum laws between 1990 and 2020 while OECD countries restricted theirs (IMR, 2022). I have also shown that leftist governments adopted these laws largely as symbolic commitments (APSR, 2023). My work on Venezuelan displacement shows that visa restrictions pushed many migrants onto irregular routes rather than stopping them (World Development, 2024). My work on democracy focuses on satisfaction with democracy, political ambition, and on how well democratic institutions represent citizens.
I use quasi-experimental designs (difference-in-differences, regression discontinuity), survey and field experiments, original policy databases and computational text analysis.
I am a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Department of Government and an Affiliated Fellow of the IDRC Chair on Migration and Displacement at Universidad del Pacífico, Peru. Before Durham I was a Fellow in Political Science and Public Policy at the LSE School of Public Policy, and I completed my PhD in the LSE Department of Government. I have worked with UNHCR in Colombia, IFAD, UNODC, the Migrant Democracy Project and the3million.
Media and policy enquiries: omar.hammoud-gallego@durham.ac.uk. I give interviews in English, Spanish and Italian.
Selected research
Symbolic Refugee Protection: Explaining Latin America’s Liberal Refugee Laws
APSA Migration and Citizenship Section Best Paper Award, Honourable Mention, 2024