Isabelle Lemay’s doctoral research in International Development at the University of Oxford seeks a better understanding of the emergence and decline of periods of openness towards refugees in the Global North. She is particularly concerned with the roles of political elites, the media and citizens in influencing policies that ease access to asylum and resettlement for displaced people.
Why do some societies demonstrate more openness towards refugees and why do favourable perceptions generally decline over time? What perceptions are most likely to lead to sympathy and to greater stability of welcoming responses to refugees? By studying the politics of asylum seeking and policy making in this way, her work is a departure from research that focuses mainly on restrictive practices against asylum seekers and refugees and the negative representations of displaced peoples which underpin those practices.
Her interest in refugee and migration studies was sparked by her broader interest in international development issues which she investigates both in theory and in practice. She notably served as an intern in Labour Mobility and Human Development with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Geneva where she conducted research on migrant workers’ access to social protection across the globe. In the light of the COVID-19 pandemic, Isabelle focused on migrants’ access to health care, sickness benefits, and unemployment protection. Her research led her to develop recommendations for IOM’s global programming on social protection.
Isabelle’s practical experience also includes working as an intern with Oxfam Québec and volunteering with PROMIS, an organization providing immigrant and refugee integration services in Montréal. Originally from Trois-Pistoles, Québec, Isabelle studied for her BSc in International Studies at Université de Montréal and her MA in Political Science with Development Studies at McGill University. Her research is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Fonds de recherche Société et Culture du Québec (FRQSC).
