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I am a postdoctoral researcher and teaching associate at the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London. I have been recently awarded the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship, funded by UK Research and Innovation, for the project Sanctuary Policies for Irregular Migrants in European Cities (SPIMEC). I am a member of the Centre on Social Movement Studies (COSMOS) at Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence and of The City Centre at Queen Mary University of London. I am also a project affiliate of the Soli*City network at the Toronto Metropolitan University.

My research agenda is inherently interdisciplinary and focuses on urban governance and politics, immigrant integration and asylum, and social movements. I am especially interested in understanding how local officials and grassroots activists interact to shape the multi-level governance of immigration, possibly breeding policy conflicts and subverting unwanted national policies. I explore these issues by looking at the welfare of irregular and forced migrants as well as of marginalised urban residents, with a focus on Europe and Latin America. On this basis, I aim to pose broader questions on the role of cities as key, innovative players in contemporary global governance, whose policy experiments may crucially contribute to a just, democratic, and sustainable future.

My research appears in political science, sociology, and geography journals, including the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies; South European Society and Politics; the International Political Science Review; the Urban Affairs Review; Territory, Politics, Governance; Citizenship Studies; PS: Political Science and Politics; Politiche Sociali / Social Policies; and in various edited volumes. I have written policy reports and opinion pieces for assorted outlets and I have been involved in various public engagement initiatives, such as the impact project Barrio Saldías and the research-policy partnership SIforREF. The British Academy, the European Union, the Government of Italy, the Research Council of Norway, and UK Research and Innovation have all supported my research.

I earned a Ph.D. in Political Science and Sociology (2020) from Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, with a thesis on migration governance and social movements in Milan and Barcelona. I have been a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Geography at Queen Mary University of London (2022), at the Centre for Research on Extremism (C-REX) at the University of Oslo (2021), and at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (2020-22). I have also held visiting research positions at the Institute for Government and Public Policy at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (2018) and at the Urban School of Sciences Po-Paris (2018-19).

You can contact me at r.bazurli@qmul.ac.uk and follow me on Twitter @RaffaeleBazurli.