Liliana Brock

My research examines migration in Latin America, focusing on how political, social, and economic conditions shape mobility across the region. I study how shifting policy regimes, exposure to transit routes, and evolving public narratives influence migrants’ decision-making and generate broader political effects. My dissertation investigates how migrants construct knowledge, assess risk, and respond to fragmented or contradictory policy signals during transit. This project draws on field-based interviews and causal inference methods to investigate how migrants adjust their strategies in response to uncertainty.

In another line of work, I examine how Mexican nationals respond to the Spanish accents and physical appearances of Latin American migrants from different national backgrounds. This project asks whether accent functions as a salient cue in intergroup exclusion within a shared language and how it interacts with visual markers of national or racialized identity. Using experimental and physiological methods, I analyze how nationally marked vocal and visual features shape perceptions of threat, legitimacy, and belonging.

Across these projects, I aim to contribute to scholarship on political behavior, identity, and policy feedbacks in contexts shaped by uncertainty and mobility. My work combines qualitative fieldwork with experimental, survey-based, and physiological approaches to investigate how migration reshapes the social and political fabric of Latin America.