Rebecca Hamlin

Rebecca Hamlin is professor of legal studies and political science and director of Legal Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She studies law and immigration politics, with particular attention to migrant categorization, refugee policy and the concept of a refugee.

Her research examines how administrative agencies and courts in the United States and other liberal democracies adjudicate migration, asylum and citizenship questions, as well as the political responses to judicial involvement in migration matters. Her work also addresses international human rights, comparative law and the relationship between international criminal law and immigration law.

Hamlin is the author of Let Me Be a Refugee: Administrative Justice and the Politics of Asylum in the United States, Canada, and Australia and Crossing: How We Label and React to People on the Move. Her current projects examine diasporic peacebuilding among Colombians in the United States, immigration restriction and Native American citizenship, refugee-producing countries, public attitudes toward refugees, and policies addressing suspected human rights violators and war criminals.