Publications
(English)

 “Migrant Exposure and Anti-Migrant Sentiment: The Case of the Venezuelan Exodus” (with Jeremy Lebow, Jonathan Moreno-Medina, and Horacio Coral). Conditionally accepted, Journal of Public Economics.

The global increase in refugee flows and anti-migrant politics has made it increasingly urgent to understand how migration translates into anti-migrant sentiment. We study the mass exodus of Venezuelans across Latin America, which coincided with an unprecedented decrease in migrant sentiment in the countries which received the most Venezuelans. However, we find no evidence that this decrease occurred in the regions within-country that received the most migrants. We do this using multiple migrant sentiment outcomes including survey measures and social media posts, multiple levels of geographic variation across seven Latin American countries, and an instrumental variable strategy. We find little evidence for heterogeneity along a range of characteristics related to labor market competition, public good scarcity, or crime. If anything, local migration increases migrant sentiment among those most directly exposed to these pressures. We also find that local migration induces meaningful, repeated contact between migrants and natives. The results are consistent with anti-migrant sentiment being driven by national-level narratives divorced from local experiences with migrants.

“Can Celebrities Reduce Prejudice? The Effect of Mohamed Salah on Islamophobic Attitudes and Behaviors” (with A. Alraba‘ah, W. Marble, and A. Siegel). American Political Science Review, 2021, 1–18. Cover article.

Can exposure to successful celebrities from stigmatized groups reduce prejudice toward that group at large? We exploit the sudden and phenomenal rise to fame of Liverpool F.C. soccer star Mohamed Salah, a visibly Muslim player, to answer this question. We causally estimate the effect of Salah joining Liverpool F.C. on Islamophobic attitudes and behaviors using 936 county-month hate crime observations, 15 million tweets from U.K. soccer fans, and an original survey experiment of 8,060 Liverpool F.C. fans. We find that Merseyside county (home to Liverpool F.C.) experienced a 18.9% drop in hate crimes relative to a synthetic control, while no similar effect was found for other types of crime. We also find that Liverpool F.C. fans halved their rates of posting anti-Muslim tweets (a drop from 7.2% to 3.4% of tweets about Muslims) relative to fans of other top-flight English soccer clubs. The survey experiment suggests that these results may be driven by increased familiarity with Islam. Our findings indicate that positive exposure to outgroup role models can reveal new information that humanizes the outgroup writ large.Mousa, Salma. "Building social cohesion between Christians and Muslims through soccer in Post-ISIS Iraq." Science. Vol. 369, Issue 6505, pp. 866-870. Cover article.

“Building social cohesion between Christians and Muslims through soccer in post-ISIS Iraq.” August 14, 2020. Science, Vol. 369, Issue 6505, pp. 866-870. Cover article.

Can intergroup contact build social cohesion after war? I randomly assigned Iraqi Christians displaced by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to an all-Christian soccer team or to a team mixed with Muslims. The intervention improved behaviors toward Muslim peers: Christians with Muslim teammates were more likely to vote for a Muslim (not on their team) to receive a sportsmanship award, register for a mixed team next season, and train with Muslims 6 months after the intervention. The intervention did not substantially affect behaviors in other social contexts, such as patronizing a restaurant in Muslim-dominated Mosul or attending a mixed social event, nor did it yield consistent effects on intergroup attitudes. Although contact can build tolerant behaviors toward peers within an intervention, building broader social cohesion outside of it is more challenging.

Replication files and data here.

Perspective piece by Betsy Levy-Paluck and Chelsey Clark: “Can playing together help us live together?”, pp.769-770.

Farha, Mark, and Mousa, Salma. "Secular Autocracy vs. Sectarian Democracy? Weighing Reasons for Christian Support for Regime Transition in Syria and Egypt," Mediterranean Politics (20:2), 2015. Special Issue: Arab Spring and Peripheries.

With the spectre of post-Spring Islamist rule looming, Christians in Syria and Egypt were forced to choose between quasi-secular autocracy and sectarian populism. The status quo ante under al-Assad and Mubarak, though democratically deficient, temporarily contained civil hostilities and afforded Christians with a modicum of secular protection and even prosperity, the degree of which sheds light on the relative absence of Syrian Christian protestors and the salient Coptic presence during the Egyptian revolution. This article explores how socio-economic and religious peripheral designations intersected with state policy to determine political (in) action amongst Christian minorities in two crucial countries of the region.

Publications (Arabic)

Mousa, Salma. “Book Review: Soldiers, Spies and Statesmen by Hazem Kandil,” Siyasat Arabiya (2:1), January 2014, pp. 177-181. [Arabic].

"الكنيسة القبطية في مصر وثورة 25 يناير: نقطة تحّول" [The Coptic Orthodox Church and the January 25th Revolution: a Turning Point], Omran (7:2), Winter 2014, pp. 131-151. [Arabic].

في سنة2011، أثارت الانتفاضات العربية التي لاقت ترحيًبا لخطابها المتعلق بالحقوق المدنية، الخشية من إمكان تفاقم الانقسامات الاجتماعية الطائفية الكامنة. ومع ظهور شبح الحكم الإسلامي ما بعد الربيع، وجد المسيحيون في مصر أنفسهم مضطرين إلى الاختيار بين استبداد شبه علماني واحتمال ديمقراطية طائفية وبسبب المظالم الاجتماعية والاقتصادية ذاتها التي أّثرت في مواطنيهم المسلمين، وخيبة أملهم مع إهمال مباركالمتزايدللشؤون المسيحية، سرعان ما انضم العديد من المسيحيين إلى الانتفاضة على الرغم من الإدانات الصارمة الصادرة عن الكنيسة.

شهدت ثورة 25 يناير تح ّو ًلا في العلاقة بين ثلاثي الكنيسة والدولة والأقباط في مصر، إذ ما عادت الدولة قادرة على الاعتماد على الكنيسة لتعزيز دعم النظام في دائرتها. وتساءل كثير من الأقباط بجدية عن الوضع الراهن للقادة الدينيين غير المنتخبين الذين يعملون كمم ّثلي طوائف غير رسميين في الدولة، واختاروا بد ًلا من ذلك التحالف مع مسلمين لبراليين والمشاركة في الحياة العامة عبر منابر علمانية. لكن، نظًرا إلى الظروف الأخيرةالمتمّثلة في هجمات طائفية متكررة وتصاعد ثقافة العداء ضد المسيحيين بسبب الحكم الإسلامي، لا تزال الكنيسة تحتفظ بدورها القيادي الرمزي، فقائدها البابا تواضروس الثاني يجاهر بالتعبير عن حقوق الأقليات في سياقها الوطني لا الطائفي. وعلى الرغم من أن العديد من الأقباط لا يزالون يعتمدون على البابا للتفاوض نيابة عنهم، فإنه يتعين على الكنيسة التكيف مع الضغوط الخارجية والداخلية المتغيرة، وإيجاد توازن دقيق بين دورها التقليدي كمتحدث باسم الطائفة   والسماح في الوقت نفسه لأشكال سياسية أخرى بالوجود خارج إطار الكنيسة

Other Writing

"Syria's Minorities and the Paradox of Neutrality,"  Syria Deeply, February 2016.

"Civil Marriage in Lebanon: For Better, not Worse," The Islamic Monthly (Issue 5, Winter 2013).

"Secular Autocracy vs. Sectarian Democracy? The Christian Predicament in the Syrian Uprising," Yale Journal of International Affairs, January 22, 2013.