Margaret Peters

Margaret Peters is a professor in the Department of Political Science at UC Los Angeles. She is also a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  Her research on the political economy of migration. She is currently working on two book projects on how the process of forced displacement affects migrants’ sense of dignity and how these dignity concerns affect decisions of whether to move from the crisis zone, where to move and when to return, and how dictators use migration, including forced migration, to remain in power. Her award-winning book, Trading Barriers: Immigration and the Remaking of Globalization, argues that the increased ability of firms to produce anywhere in the world combined with growing international competition due to lowered trade barriers has led to more significant limits on immigration, as businesses no longer see a need to support open immigration at home.