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Ieva Birka

Ieva Birka, the Juris Padegs Research Fellow in the Baltic Studies Program at Yale University for the Fall 2015 semester, is the author and co-author of several publications in English and Latvian focusing on issues of social integration, feelings of belonging, dual citizenship, and the Latvian diaspora.   
 
At Yale she developed and implemented a survey focused on the ethnic Latvian population born in the United States and Canada.  The aim of the survey was to establish the feasibility of the Latvian Return Migration Plan, to understand how those born in the United States and Canada but now living in Latvia are faring, how informed about life in Latvia are those planning return, and the factors hindering the return to Latvia of others.  On December 10, 2015 she gave a talk at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University titled “You Are Moving Where?!? The Baltic Countries and Return Migration.”
 
Dr. Birka received her Ph. D. in Political Science from the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Latvia in 2014.  Her Ph.D. thesis, “Integration and Sense of Belonging – Case Study Latvia,” represents an innovative approach to the study of social integration and a sense of belonging.  The framework was tested through analysis of data from 2004 and 2010 on Russian-speaking youth in Latvia to identify what factors showed a consistent correlation with expressed national attachment and how social integration influences the development of feelings of belonging in the Russian-speaking population.
 
From 2013-2014 Dr. Birka was a SCIEX Fellow at the University of Lucerne in Switzerland, where she worked on a research project titled “Dual Citizenship – Endangering or Strengthening the National Community?”  The resulting study from her collaboration with Dr. Joachim Blatter and Dr. Andrea Schlenker of the University of Lucerne – “Practicing Transnational Citizenship: Dual Nationality and Simultaneous Political Involvement among Emigrants” – was shortlisted for the Immigration Research Network inaugural best paper prize.  She holds an M.Sc. degree from the London School of Economics Government Department and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Rochester in the United States.
 
She is currently affiliated with the University of Latvia’s Center for Diaspora and Migration Research.