About

Vasiliki Fouka is an Associate Professor of Political Science, a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Her research interests lie at the intersection of political economy and political behavior. She uses historical and contemporary data to understand what shapes social identities in the short and long run and the implications of that for political and economic behavior and policy design. Major applications of her research include immigrant assimilation, the determinants of prejudice against ethnic and racial minorities, and intergroup conflict. Her articles have been published in leading journals in political science and economics, including the American Political Science Review, the Annual Review of Political Science, and the Review of Economic Studies.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Geography
• Economics
• Social psychology
• Gender studies
• Demographic economics
• Psychology
• Law
• Development economics
• Demography

Selected publications

• Migration and the Making of the English Middle Class

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2026-01-01

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  When do people identify with their class? Evidence from social psychology shows that individuals are more likely to identify with a group if they are similar to its members. We study early 20th century Britain and show that regional cultural heterogeneity combined with internal migration influenced class identity. We develop and validate a measure of class identity using naming decisions. Exploiting within-household variation, we show that migration patterns that increased the local share of culturally-distant workers reduced working class identification. Where migration increased the cultural distance of the working class, workers were less likely to join unions, voters were less likely to support the nascent Labour Party, and parliamentary candidates were less likely to target working class voters. By 1911, slower in-migration and rising local population growth reduced working class distance in urban areas, which also became strongholds of support for Labour. Migration alters social identity and creates political cleavages.

  PublisherDOI

• Migration and the Making of the English Middle Class

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Culture and Contemporary Political Preferences

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-05-01

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter reviews the literature on the relationship between culture and political preferences.We distinguish conceptually between the direct cultural transmission of political ideology and the transmission of more primitive preferences and beliefs that influence preferences over policies, parties, and forms of government.While there is substantial evidence that political preferences persist across generations and within communities, the literature often does not specify which primitive values and beliefs drive this persistence.A growing body of work points to a multifaceted mapping from underlying preferences and beliefs over the material world and social relations to political ideology.In this chapter, we summarize these studies, organize their findings in a coherent framework, and suggest possible directions for future research.

  PublisherDOI

• Culture and Contemporary Political Preferences

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Culture and Contemporary Political Preferences

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• From Immigrants to Americans: Race and Assimilation during the Great Migration

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01 · 44 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Confronting the Past? Public Norms, Private Truths, and the Politics of Memory in Post-WWII Germany

  2025-09-02

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  How do nations confront a history of past atrocities? Can public efforts to address the past shift private views, or do they merely establish social norms fostering the misrepresentation of stigmatized preferences? A prime example of confronting the past is post-war Germany, shaped by the legacy of Nazism's atrocities in World War II. Decades later, we examine how public recognition of collective guilt through discourse, education, and culture has shaped German identity and attitudes towards the country's history. Using a large online survey and an experimental treatment, we distinguish private preferences from their public expression. Our findings reveal that low national pride and muted emotional ties to German history are internalized rather than driven by social desirability. However, a stigma persists around publicly expressing a desire to move beyond a perpetrator-focused narrative. This study underscores both the potential and the limits of public recognition of a nation's historical sins.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Hate crimes and identity of young Muslims in Europe

  2025-08-12

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Anti-Muslim hostility has proliferated in Western countries in recent years. We examine the impact of this development on the attitudes of young Muslims in the UK and Germany. We combine measures of hate crimes and Islamophobia in the media with a survey of children of immigrants to study how group targeting impacts national identification, expressions of religiosity and attitudes on the process of immigrant integration. We find that exposure to anti-Muslim hostility does not lead to disengagement from majority society, but instead increases expressions of belonging and distancing from the religious ingroup. A custom survey of young Muslims and qualitative interviews with Muslim community leaders suggest that concerns about social status, desire for belonging, and fear of victimization are key mechanisms behind these reactions. Heightened expressions of majority identity appear to function as a strategy to avoid discrimination and to gain social acceptance by distancing from the targeted group.

  PublisherDOI

• Industry and Identity – The Migration Linkage Between Economic and Cultural Change in 19th Century Britain

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Confronting the Past? Public Norms, Private Truths, and the Politics of Memory in Post-WWII Germany

  2024-12-09

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  How do nations confront a history of past atrocities? Can public efforts to address the past shift private views, or do they merely establish social norms fostering the misrepresentation of stigmatized preferences? A prime example of confronting the past is post-war Germany, shaped by the legacy of Nazism's atrocities in World War II. Decades later, we examine how public recognition of collective guilt through discourse, education, and culture has shaped German identity and attitudes towards the country's history. Using a nationally representative survey and an experimental treatment, we distinguish private preferences from their public expression. Our findings reveal that low national pride and muted emotional ties to German history are internalized rather than driven by social desirability. However, a stigma persists around publicly expressing a desire to move beyond a perpetrator-focused narrative. This study underscores both the potential and the limits of the public recognition of a nation’s historical sins.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Marco Tabellini

  Center for Economic and Policy Research

  31 shared

• Alain Schläpfer

  Stanford University

  27 shared

• Elias Dinas

  27 shared

• Mina Cikara

  Harvard University

  18 shared

• Hans‐Joachim Voth

  14 shared

• Brian Beach

  University College London

  9 shared

• Soumyajit Mazumder

  8 shared

• Alvaro Calderon

  Stanford University

  8 shared