About

David D. Laitin is the James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. He received his BA from Swarthmore College and his Ph.D. in political science from UC Berkeley, where he worked under Ernst Haas and Hanna Pitkin. His academic career includes teaching positions at UCSD, the University of Chicago, and Stanford. His research focuses on comparative politics, with field research conducted in Somalia, Yorubaland (Nigeria), Catalonia (Spain), Estonia, and France, emphasizing issues of language and religion and their links between nation and state. Laitin has authored several books on topics such as politics, language, religion, ethnicity, and violence, and has collaborated on research related to ethnicity, civil war, and terrorism. He has conducted ethnographic, survey, and experimental research on Muslim integration into France, and is co-director of Stanford's Immigration Policy Lab. Laitin has received fellowships from prominent foundations and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. In 2021, he was awarded the John Skytte Prize in Political Science.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Economics
• Data Mining
• Data science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Sociology
• Law
• Development economics
• Demographic economics
• Mathematics
• Engineering
• Medicine
• Geography
• Microeconomics
• Internet privacy
• Econometrics
• Economic growth
• Public relations
• Anthropology

Selected publications

• Reconsideration of Secure Communities rollout reveals preemptive local-federal cooperation in immigration enforcement

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2026-04-06 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Qualitative studies on local police collaborations with federal immigration enforcement authorities reveal risks to the well-being of noncitizens, particularly the undocumented, and their families and communities. Yet statistical evidence of these policies' effects is mixed. We propose that quantitative studies may misidentify the timing of when these policies begin disrupting immigrant communities by relying on a policy's formal enactment date to indicate its activation. We test this proposal in the context of Secure Communities, a federal program with a staggered rollout that asked local police to detain noncitizens they arrested for possible transfer into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody and deportation. Individual states signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the federal government as a framework for their county-by-county activation of Secure Communities. Counties were not required to activate immediately; their formal enactment frequently occurred later when prompted by ICE. We find that the date when a state signed an MOA consistently predicts a county's increased probability of receiving ICE requests to hold noncitizens in detention, transferring detained noncitizens into ICE custody, and removing noncitizens from the country. This relationship operates most strongly in counties with preexisting enforcement infrastructure between local police and federal immigration authorities. By contrast, while we find that enactment dates are associated with increases in each outcome, pretreatment trends render these relationships statistically indeterminate. Our results highlight how multilayered relationships between local and federal authorities allow for policing to be used as a tool for facilitating the preemptive implementation of immigration enforcement across the country at the expense of noncitizens and their families and communities.

  PublisherDOI

• Language Policy and Socio-Economic Outcomes

  2026-01-01

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  PublisherDOI

• The socioeconomic returns to citizenship: A randomized controlled trial

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2026-01-30

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Based on observational studies, conventional wisdom suggests that citizenship carries economic benefits. We leverage a randomized experiment from New York where low-income registrants with permanent residency who wanted to become citizens entered a lottery to receive fee vouchers to naturalize. Voucher recipients were about 36 p.p. more likely to naturalize. Yet, we find no discernible effects of access to citizenship on multiple economic outcomes, including income, credit scores, access to credit, financial distress, and employment. Leveraging a multidimensional immigrant integration index, we similarly find no measurable effects on noneconomic integration. However, we do find that citizenship reduces fears of deportation. Explaining divergence from past studies, our results also reveal evidence of positive selection into citizenship, suggesting that observational studies are susceptible to selection bias.

  PublisherDOI

• “Welcome to France.” Can mandatory integration contracts foster immigrant integration?

  American Journal of Political Science · 2025-04-09 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract European governments, struggling with incorporating diverse immigrant populations, introduced integration contracts. Through language training and compulsory civics courses, these contracts aim to induce new migrants to adopt the host society's culture, respect its values, and improve their labor market outcomes. Despite their popularity, little empirical evidence exists on whether integration contracts catalyze integration or trigger a backlash. To shed light on this question, we leverage the staggered introduction of France's integration contract across metropolitan departments between 2003 and 2006 to implement a regression discontinuity design. We use census data, labor force surveys, and our own survey of refugees to estimate the effect of the contract on integration outcomes. We find the integration contract facilitated employment in the short term without backlash but did not translate into long‐lasting integration gains.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Exchange on David Laitin’s <i>Identity in Formation</i>

  Nationalities Papers · 2025-05-06 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In 2018, David Laitin and Pål Kolstø engaged in a discussion at the Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Nationalities held at Columbia University, New York. The panel was a 20-year retrospective on Identity in Formation: the Russian-speaking populations in the Near Abroad (Laitin 1998).

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Emigration and radical right populism

  American Journal of Political Science · 2024-03-27 · 24 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract An extensive literature links the rise of populist radical right (PRR) parties to immigration. We argue that another demographic trend is also significant: emigration. The departure of citizens due to internal and international emigration is a major phenomenon affecting elections via two complementary mechanisms. Emigration alters the composition of electorates, but also changes the preferences of the left behind. Empirically, we establish a positive correlation between PRR vote shares and net‐migration loss at the subnational level across Europe. A more fine‐grained panel analysis of precincts in Sweden demonstrates that the departure of citizens raises PRR vote shares in places of emigration and that the Social Democrats are the principal losers from emigration. Elite interviews and newspaper analyses explore how emigration produces material and psychological grievances on which populists capitalize and that established parties do not effectively address. Emigration and the frustrations it generates emerge as important sources of populist success.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Where Are the Mimics When Passing Seems Easy?

  2024-04-23

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter looks at defensive mimicry, or rather the relative absence of it during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Given the high stakes for the victim population and the cultural proximity between the two ethnic groups, one would reasonably expect many Tutsis to seek to avoid harm by pretending to be Hutus, but this does not seem to have been the case. A rich body of survival testimonies suggests that Tutsis sought self-preservation through flight, hiding, bribery, friendship cultivation, and other tactics, but not through mimicry, except in a small number of cases. The chapter explains why this was the case and musters quantitative evidence and theoretical arguments to suggest that this counter-intuitive pattern likely extends to other high-intensity civil war situations outside Rwanda.

  PublisherDOI

• The Historical Sources of Language Policy

  The Journal of Politics · 2024-09-03 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Emigration: The hidden catalyst behind the rise of the radical right in Europe’s depopulating regions

  2024-06-06

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Does Access to Citizenship Confer Socio-Economic Returns? Evidence from a Randomized Control Design

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Yvonne Jones

  106 shared

• Sam Kernell

  106 shared

• Gerald H. Clayton

  Children's Hospital Colorado

  106 shared

• Dan Metlay

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  106 shared

• Beverly Kearns

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  106 shared

• William Lunch

  Public Policy Institute of California

  106 shared

• Dorothy Clayton

  East Carolina University

  97 shared

• Judith Goldstein

  Princeton University

  86 shared

Education

• B.A.

  Swarthmore College

• Ph.D., Political Science

  UC Berkeley

Awards & honors

• John Skytte Prize in Political Science from the Johan Skytte…
• Fellowship from the Howard Foundation
• Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation
• Fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation
• Fellowship from the Russell Sage Foundation