Kamal Sadiq
Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at UC Irvine
Kamal Sadiq (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is an associate professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine. His research focuses on migration, citizenship and security processes, institutions, and policies across the Global South, specifically in South Asia (India, Bangladesh, and Nepal) and South-East Asia (Malaysia and Indonesia). His book Paper Citizens: How Illegal Immigrants Acquire Citizenship in Developing Countries (Oxford University Press, 2009) shows how fake, but seemingly real, documents provide a path to citizenship status and rights in weak-capacity states with consequences for state sovereignty and security. His recent co-edited book (with John Echeverri-Gent), Interpreting Politics: Situated Knowledge, India, and the Rudolph Legacy (Oxford University Press, 2020) develops an interpretive mode of political analysis emphasizing the construction of meaning and motivation for political action, with a focus on changes in contemporary Indian politics.
His articles have appeared in European Journal of International Relations, International Studies Quarterly, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Asian Perspectives, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, PS: Political Science & Politics, the Oxford Handbook of Citizenship, and select edited books. Sadiq’s research has been funded by the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation. He has chaired the Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Migration Studies (ENMISA) section of the International Studies Association (ISA) and the Migration and Citizenship section of the American Political Science Association (APSA). He serves on the editorial board of the journal Citizenship Studies and the advisory board of the journal Migration Politics. He is also director of the Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies (CGPACS) at the University of California, Irvine.
