Immigration Papers provides a weekly dashboard of newly published research on immigration in political science, sociology, and economics. Each paper is ranked based on its similarity to a set of benchmark (or “yardstick”) papers, using a score derived from the highest cosine similarity between text embeddings of the paper’s title and abstract and those of the yardstick papers.

The source data comes from paper-picnic.com, which queries the Crossref API to identify new research articles published in the past week across more than 60 journals in political science and adjacent fields. Crossref is the world’s largest registry of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) and metadata. Continuously updated by publishers, Crossref provides an easy way to get metadata for research articles.

To assess similarity, OpenAI’s latest text-embedding-3-large model converts the titles and abstracts of each paper into 3,072-dimensional vector representations. These text embeddings capture the semantic meaning and contextual relationships in the text. Comparing these vectors using cosine similarity identifies papers most aligned—conceptually and contextually—with the yardstick set.

The process is fully automated via Github Actions which retrieves the data, computes the similarity scores, and generates the dashboard on Fridays. All code is available on GitHub.

The yardstick paper stack consists of 40 papers sourced from the syllabus The Politics of Immigration:

• Leonardo Bursztyn, Thomas Chaney, Tarek Alexander Hassan, Aakaash Rao. 2021. The Immigrant Next Door: Exposure, Prejudice, and Altruism. American Economic Review

• Benjamin Feigenberg. 2020. Fenced Out: The Impact of Border Construction On US-Mexico Migration. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

• Joshua L Kalla, David E Broockman. 2020. Reducing Exclusionary Attitudes Through Interpersonal Conversation: Evidence From Three Field Experiments. American Political Science Review

• Aala Abdelgadir, Vasiliki Fouka. 2020. Political Secularism and Muslim Integration in The West: Assessing the Effects of the French Headscarf Ban. American Political Science Review

• Naomi Friedman-Sokuler, Claudia Senik. 2020. From Pink-Collar to Lab Coat: Cultural Persistence and Diffusion of Socialist Gender Norms. Journal of Population Economics

• Elizabeth U Cascio, Ethan G Lewis. 2020. Opening the Door: Migration and Self-Selection in a Restrictive Legal Immigration Regime. Working Paper

• Dominik Hangartner, Elias Dinas, Moritz Marbach, Konstantinos Matakos, Dimitrios Xefteris. 2019. Does Exposure to the Refugee Crisis Make Natives More Hostile?. American Political Science Review

• Henning Finseraas, Torbjørn Hanson, Åshild A Johnsen, Andreas Kotsadam, Gaute Torsvik. 2019. Trust, Ethnic Diversity, and Personal Contact: A Field Experiment. Journal of Public Economics

• Giovanni Peri, Vasil Yasenov. 2019. The Labor Market Effects of a Refugee Wave Synthetic Control Method Meets the Mariel Boatlift. Journal of Human Resources

• Heaven Crawley, Jessica Hagen-Zanker. 2019. Deciding Where to Go: Policies, People And Perceptions Shaping Destination Preferences. International Migration

• Seth J Hill, Daniel J Hopkins, Gregory A Huber. 2019. Local Demographic Changes and US Presidential Voting, 2012 to 2016. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

• Cevat Giray Aksoy, Panu Poutvaara. 2019. Refugees’ and Irregular Migrants’ Self-Selection into Europe: Who Migrates Where?. Journal of Development Economics

• Sascha O Becker, Thiemo Fetzer, Dennis Novy. 2017. Who Voted for Brexit? A Comprehensive District-Level Analysis. Economic Policy

• Jens Hainmueller, Dominik Hangartner, Giuseppe Pietrantuono. 2017. Catalyst or Crown: Does Naturalization Promote The Long-Term Social Integration of Immigrants?. American Political Science Review

• Henning Finseraas, Andreas Kotsadam. 2017. Does Personal Contact With Ethnic Minorities Affect Anti-Immigrant Sentiments? Evidence From a Field Experiment. European Journal of Political Research

• Douglas S. Massey, Karen A. Pren, Jorge Durand. 2016. Why Border Enforcement Backfired. American Journal of Sociology

• Yann Algan, Camille Hémet, David D. Laitin. 2016. The Social Effects of Ethnic Diversity at the Local Level: A Natural Experiment With Exogenous Residential Allocation. Journal of Political Economy

• Eric D Gould, Esteban F Klor. 2016. The Long-run Effect of 9/11: Terrorism, Backlash, and the Assimilation of Muslim Immigrants in the West. The Economic Journal

• Jens Hainmueller, Daniel J. Hopkins. 2015. The Hidden American Immigration Consensus: A Conjoint Analysis of Attitudes Toward Immigrants. American Journal of Political Science

• Rafaela M. Dancygier, David D. Laitin. 2014. Immigration into Europe: Economic Discrimination, Violence, and Public Policy. Annual Review of Political Science

• Jennifer Fitzgerald, David Leblang, Jessica C. Teets. 2014. Defying the Law of Gravity: The Political Economy of International Migration. World Politics

• Jens Hainmueller, Daniel J. Hopkins. 2014. Public Attitudes Toward Immigration. Annual Review of Political Science

• Benjamin J. Newman, Yamil Velez. 2014. Group Size Versus Change? Assessing Americans’ Perception of Local Immigration. Political Research Quarterly

• Ryan D Enos. 2014. Causal Effect of Intergroup Contact on Exclusionary Attitudes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

• Petra Moser, Alessandra Voena, Fabian Waldinger. 2014. German Jewish �migr�s and US Invention. American Economic Review

• Irene Bloemraad, Matthew Wright. 2014. “Utter Failure’’ or Unity Out of Diversity? Debating and Evaluating Policies of Multiculturalism. International Migration Review

• James F. Hollifield, Tom K. Wong. 2014. The Politics of International Migration. How Can We “Bring the State Back In”?. In: Migration Theory. Talking across Disciplines

• Charles Hirschman. 2013. The Contributions of Immigrants to American Culture. Daedalus

• Neil Malhotra, Yotam Margalit, Cecilia Hyunjung Mo. 2013. Economic Explanations for Opposition to Immigration: Distinguishing Between Prevalence and Conditional Impact. American Journal of Political Science

• Alejandro Portes, Erik Vickstrom. 2011. Diversity, Social Capital, and Cohesion. Annual Review of Sociology

• Daniel J. Hopkins. 2010. Politicized Places: Explaining Where and When Immigrants Provoke Local Opposition. American Political Science Review

• Ruud Koopmans. 2010. Trade-Offs Between Equality and Difference: Immigrant Integration, Multiculturalism and the Welfare State in Cross-National Perspective. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

• Giovanni Facchini, Anna Maria Mayda. 2008. From Individual Attitudes Towards Migrants To Migration Policy Outcomes: Theory and Evidence. Economic Policy

• Robert D Putnam. 2007. E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in The Twenty-First Century. The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture. Scandinavian Political Studies

• Amanda Levinson. 2005. The Regularisation of Unauthorized Migrants: Literature Survey and Country Case Studies. Working Paper

• Paul M. Sniderman, Louk Hagendoorn, Markus Prior. 2004. Predisposing Factors and Situational Triggers: Exclusionary Reactions to Immigrant Minorities. American Political Science Review

• Jeannette Money. 1997. No Vacancy: The Political Geography of Immigration Control in Advanced Industrial Countries. International Organization

• Gary P Freeman. 1995. Modes of Immigration Politics in Liberal Democratic States. International Migration Review

• Claudia Goldin. 1994. The Political Economy of Immigration Restriction In the United States, 1890 to 1921. In: The Regulated Economy: A Historical Approach to Political Economy

• David Card. 1990. The Impact of the Mariel Boatlift on the Miami Labor Market. Industrial & Labor Relations Review