Filiz Garip is Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Her research lies at the intersection of migration, economic sociology and inequality. Within this general area, she studies the mechanisms that enable or constrain mobility and lead to greater or lesser degrees of social and economic inequality.  

Her book, On the Move: Changing Mechanisms of Mexico-U.S. Migration (Princeton University Press, 2016), investigated the Mexican migration flow that changed the face of the United States over the last fifty years. Using data from more than a hundred thousand people and algorithms to uncover patterns, her analysis showed how different events mobilized different kinds of people. Labor shortages in America pulled poor rural Mexican workers seeking opportunities. Crashing Mexican economy pushed middle-class young people looking to survive the crisis. Increasing trade made it easier for educated workers from border cities to go back and forth. This book has won the Mirra Komrarovsky Award from the Eastern Sociological Society, the Otis Dudley Duncan Award from the Population Section of the American Sociological Association and the Best Book Award from the Migration and Citizenship Section of the American Political Science Association.  

Dr. Garip’s scholarly work has appeared in a wide array of journals, including the American Journal of Sociology, Nature, Social Forces, Demography, and Sociological Methods & Research.

Dr. Garip received her Ph.D. in Sociology and M.S.E in Operations Research & Financial Engineering both from Princeton University. She holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Bosphorus University in Turkey.