Sephardic Citizenship, Genealogy, and Ethnic Return

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One strand of my work examines the Sephardic citizenship laws of Spain and Portugal. I study how these laws were understood, used, and contested on the ground. This research is based on fieldwork and interviews in Mexico, the United States, and Spain, with particular attention to Latin American elites who sought European citizenship by hiring professional genealogists to document Sephardic Jewish ancestry.

This project asks how historical memory, legal opportunity, and elite mobility intersect. It explores the production of genealogical evidence, the role of experts and intermediaries, and the ways applicants interpret Sephardic descent as a resource for mobility, status, and security. More broadly, it considers how states transform ancestry into citizenship and how people mobilize distant ethnic origins in response to contemporary global inequalities.

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Status and Solidarity from Microsociological and Evolutionary Perspectives

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A second strand of my research brings sociological theory into conversation with evolutionary perspectives on status, cooperation, and solidarity. One project develops the concept of “conspicuous mobility,” examining how differences in travel freedom  make passports into status symbols. 

I also study the sources of solidarity in national and diasporic communities. My research on Israel’s Remembrance Day siren examines how civic religion, ritual participation, and symbolic synchronization affect national identification and collective belonging. Related projects investigate how war conditions reshape solidarity both within Israel and among diaspora communities. Together, these studies ask how collective identities are activated, reinforced, or weakened under conditions of threat, ritual, and political conflict.

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Global Transformations of Citizenship

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A third strand of my work analyzes changes in the global structure of citizenship. I have written on dual citizenship, global inequality, and the ways citizenship operates as a stratified resource in an unequal world. This research examines how citizenship facilitates mobility, security, and opportunity, while also reproducing hierarchies between states and populations.

More recently, I have been studying the growing “weight” of citizenship: the expansion of obligations, conditions, and risks attached to formal membership. These include military service, taxation, denaturalization, and other forms of state control over citizens at home and abroad. This work challenges the idea that citizenship has become purely lighter, more flexible, or more instrumental, showing instead that citizenship remains a powerful institution of both privilege and obligation.