Visiting Assistant Professor at Brigham Young University
I study the ways immigration affects politics and intergroup relations. My recent work explores how new migration flows influence relations between citizens and immigrants in Chile, Brazil, and Europe.

Contact:
reed.rasband@byu.edu

About Me

I am a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department at Brigham Young University, studying comparative politics. I study identity politics, public opinion and intergroup relations with an emphasis on migration. My work incorporates a variety of methodological approaches, including survey data, interviews, and experiments. I have conducted fieldwork in Brazil, Colombia, Thailand, and the United Kingdom.

I received my Ph.D. in November 2024 from Harvard's Department of Government, where I was also a lecturer in Spring 2025. At Harvard I was a member of Harvard's Working Group in Political Psychology and an affiliate of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, and the Government Department Pedagogy Fellow. I hold a B.A. in Political Science from Brigham Young University.

Job Market Paper

Taking the Heat: How Salient New Immigrant Groups Redirect Xenophobic Public Opinion

Under what conditions can xenophobic attitudes toward immigrants recede? I argue that citizens’ evaluations of one group are made relative to other salient groups in their environment. Accordingly, a new group’s arrival can lead local citizens to improve their opinions about other already present immigrant groups by providing contrast and redirecting negative attention formerly given to others.

I test this argument with data from Chile, a long-standing host of Peruvian migrants which also received over 350,000 Venezuelan migrants between 2016 and 2019. By combining internet search data, a panel survey of group-specific attitudes, and an original survey experiment, I show that Chileans’ attitudes about Peruvian migrants improved markedly as Venezuelan migration increased in salience during this period. These findings suggest that prejudice towards some migrants can decline quickly simply by hosts switching reference groups as new immigrants arrive, without requiring longer-term processes of assimilation or group recategorization.

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Visiting Assistant Professor at Brigham Young UniversityI study the ways immigration affects politics and intergroup relations. My recent work explores how new migration flows influence relations between citizens and immigrants in Chile, Brazil, and Europe.

Contact: reed.rasband@byu.edu

About Me

Job Market Paper

Taking the Heat: How Salient New Immigrant Groups Redirect Xenophobic Public Opinion

Reed RasbandVisiting Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, BYUreed.rasband@byu.edu

Visiting Assistant Professor at Brigham Young University
I study the ways immigration affects politics and intergroup relations. My recent work explores how new migration flows influence relations between citizens and immigrants in Chile, Brazil, and Europe.

Contact:
reed.rasband@byu.edu

Reed Rasband
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, BYU
reed.rasband@byu.edu