Jake Watson

Post-Doctoral Fellow

Jake Watson is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology. His research interests include political sociology, refugees and immigrants, globalization and transnationalism, urban sociology, and race and ethnicity. Bringing together work across these subfields, Jake’s research is particularly interested in the role of situated racial processes in shaping the politics and regulation of immigrant inclusion. Jake is currently working on a book manuscript drawing on actor-network theory, organizational sociology, and critical perspectives in migration studies to examine the outcomes of US federal resettlement policy on refugees’ sense of rights, status, and belonging. His work is published in Social Problems, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Identities, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, and the European Journal of Sociology. Before joining VU, Jake earned a PhD in Sociology from Boston University, and spent a year at the University of Chicago as a Harper-Schmidt Fellow in the Liberal Arts. At Vanderbilt, Jake will also be coordinating the interdisciplinary Borders of Citizenship Grand Challenge Initiative.