Research Interests: Climate Change, Migration, and Conflict
I am a PhD candidate in political science at the Schar School, George Mason University. My research focuses on the nexus of climate change, migration, and conflict, focusing particularly on the dynamics linking environmental stress, population movement, and civil war. I am particularly interested in how changes in freshwater resource availability affects population movement and state stability, along with understanding what calculations motivate people to move under increasing constraints – both environmental and socio-political. I explore this area of research utilising both qualitative and quantitative methods.
My most recent research investigates the role of restrictive US immigration policy changes following the rise of the second Trump administration – “The Trump Effect” – on transit migrant behaviour and decision-making in Costa Rica, published in the Journal on Migration and Human Security (2026). Utilising a novel survey containing over 40,000 transit migrant respondents in Costa Rica, conclusions point to a heterogenous “Trump Effect,” where migrants travelling with children and moving for economic reasons were less deterred than others. Migrants continued to show disinterest in continuing their journeys to the US even when provided hypothetical situations that enabled their immigration into the US. To arrive at these conclusions, I employed statistical analysis to understand general transit migrant intentions following the implementation of increasingly restrictive US immigration policies over the duration of both the Biden and Trump administrations, and supported these findings with qualitative survey responses.
Before my PhD studies, I received my MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in international relations with specialisations in conflict management and international economics. I also received a dual-degree BA in international relations and history from Tufts University.
I am South Korean by nationality, but was born and raised in Vienna, Austria.
How do transit migrants – individuals who have already left their country of origin but are yet to arrive at their intended destinations – respond to destination state immigration policy changes?
Published in Journal on Migration and Human Security (2026).
Sanggyu Suh 