Today’s guest is Kelsey P. Norman, a fellow for the Middle East at Rice University’s Baker Institute and director of the Women’s Rights, Human Rights, and Refugees Program. Her book with Dr. Nicholas Micinski, titled Aiding Autocrats: Migration Management, Governance, and Repression in Africa, offers the first global account of how wealthy countries use money and influence to control the movement of people across the world. In this episode, Alon and Kelsey discuss the broader implications of migration management aid, what it does and what kind of impact it actually has, how this type of aid often does not actually reduce migration and can in fact undermine democracy, and whether or not these systems can be improved upon to have the type of impact they are intended to have. Full bio Kelsey Norman, Ph.D., is a fellow for the Middle East at Rice University’s Baker Institute and director of the Women’s Rights, Human Rights, and Refugees Program. Her research focuses on the politics of migration and refugee hosting in the Middle East and globally, as well as human rights, comparative political institutions, international relations, and Middle East and North African politics. She also teaches courses in the Department of Political Science and the Master of Global Affairs program at Rice University. Her research has been published in academic journals including the European Journal of International Relations, International Studies Review, the Journal of Global Security Studies, International Migration Review, The Journal of Refugee Studies, Migration Politics, and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, among others. She has also published policy-oriented articles in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and The Conversation. Her article, “Rich Countries Cannot Outsource Their Migration Dilemmas,” won the 2021 Perry World House-Foreign Affairs Emerging Scholars Policy Prize. In recognition of her research, she was awarded the 2025 Emerging Scholar award by the Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Migration section of the International Studies Association, as well as an Honorable Mention for the 2025 Emerging Scholar award by the Migration and Citizenship section of the American Political Science Association. Her first book, Reluctant Reception: Refugees, Migration, and Governance in the Middle East and North Africa, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2021. The book is based on three years of fieldwork in Egypt, Morocco and Turkey, and is adapted from her award-winning dissertation. The book was selected as one of Choice’s Outstanding Titles for 2021, was awarded an honorable mention by the American Political Science Association’s Migration and Citizenship 2021 Best Book Committee, and was selected for The Washington Post’s 2022 Annual African Politics Summer Reading Spectacular. Her second book with Dr. Nicholas Micinski, titled Aiding Autocrats: Migration Management, Governance, and Repression in Africa, is forthcoming in 2026 from Cambridge University Press. The book offers the first global account of how wealthy countries use money and influence to control the movement of people across the world. Prior to joining the Baker Institute, Norman was an SSHRC postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Political Science at the University of British Columbia and a postdoctoral fellow at the Sié Chéou-Kang Center for International Security and Diplomacy at the University of Denver. She received her doctorate in political science from the University of California, Irvine, a master of public policy from the University of Toronto, and a bachelor of arts from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
