Anna Boucher

Associate Professor Anna Boucher is a global migration expert as it intersects with public policy and comparative politics. She is the Chair of the Discipline of Government and International Relations in the School of Social and Political Sciences. Her research covers immigration, gender and racial diversity, inequality and labour market and regulatory change as well as skill selection of migrants. She has written three books on migration that cover skilled immigration, gender diversity and workplace exploitation. The first, Gender, Migration and the Global Race for Talent (Manchester University Press) creates diversity indicators that have been used by international agencies. Her second book with Professor Justin Gest, Crossroads: Immigration Regimes in an Age of Demographic Change (Cambridge University Press, New York) compares immigration regimes across 30 countries and has won multiple awards and nomination for the Stein Rokkan Prize in Comparative Politics, considered the second most prestigious prizes globally in political science. Her third book Patterns of Exploitation: Migrant Worker Rights in Advanced Democraciesis out in early 2023 with Oxford University Press (New York) and analyses labour market exploitation of migrants in four countries, building on a database of 1,912 migrants in 907 court cases that she constructed with a team of lawyers. A fourth book (in progress) covers the Holocaust and the creation of a global Jewish diaspora and is co-authored with Dr Joseph Toltz and is under contract with Manchester University Press.

Anna is a regular commentator in the media and consultant to domestic and global governments on migration issues. She holds six qualifications in law and political science and is an admitted solicitor of the Supreme Court of NSW, having completed a placement at Clayton Utz Law Firm (Sydney). She volunteers in the pro bono legal space. Prior to coming to Sydney University, she was an Australian Commonwealth Scholar and Bucerius Scholar in Migration Studies at the London School of Economics where she completed her masters, doctorate and teaching qualifications.

Research interests

• Comparative Politics
• Public Policy
• Australian Politics
• Immigration policy and politics
• Welfare state policy
• Gender and politics
• Population politics
• Ethnic relations
• Human Rights
• Public Law
• Research Methods
• Australian, Canadian and German politics
• Economic migration
• Comparative migration in democratic and non-democratic countries