Laís Saleh-Hughes is a PhD candidate (Migration, Political Science) at ICS-ULisboa. Her research focuses on how selective policies for skilled migrants can pose different challenges on the basis of gender, race and class. She studies policy changes in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom from the beginning of the economic crisis in 2007 until now. Her master's dissertation at UCP-Lisboa focused on the role of policies and migratory flows from Brazilians to Portugal. By focusing on the role policies have in shaping migratory flows, she tries to unveil the way in which they replicate societal inequalities and can - unwillingly or not - enable discriminatory practices and hostile narratives around migration.
PhD Candidate: Migrations, Political Science
Institute of Social Sciences (ICS), University of Lisbon (UL)
Titled Gender and Politics of Immigration: An analysis of policies towards high skilled migrants in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, her thesis overlaps sociology and political science as its main guiding disciplines to answer if and how policies towards skilled migrants can pose obstacles on the basis of gender, race and class. Her research focuses on policy changes in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom made in the context of the great economic crisis and its aftermath, trying to answer whether these changes posed unequal opportunities to different social groups. The contribution of this project is to further the debate around discriminatory practices and selective policies, but also to discuss the role of selective policies in shaping hostile narratives around immigration. Her supervising team is formed by Marta Rosales at ICS-Ulisboa and Eleonore Kofman at Middlesex University.
Keywords: skilled migration, discriminatory practices, immigration policies, gender, race, class