Inside the Logic of Asylum Law: A Conversation with Philip Kretsedemas

Philip Kretsedemas is a seasoned researcher, policy analyst, and public intellectual whose work centers on the complex intersections of immigration law, race, social policy, and national identity.

He is currently the Managing Director of Research, Evaluation, and Data Analytics at the Acacia Center for Justice, where he leads national research efforts aimed at advancing immigrant rights and equitable legal access.

With a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Minnesota, Philip spent over 20 years in academia, teaching at institutions including UMass-Boston, where he rose to the rank of full professor. He has published widely on topics such as immigration enforcement, multiculturalism, and the Black migrant experience, with works appearing in both scholarly journals and edited volumes.

Philip’s approach is deeply informed by on-the-ground experience with advocacy organizations like Catalyst Miami and the National Immigration Project. His transnational upbringing—in Canada, the Bahamas, England, and the U.S.—shaped his lifelong dedication to justice and inclusion. Now based in Boston, he balances his professional work with raising his daughters and translating complex policy debates into accessible insights. His current focus includes developing thought leadership in security studies and fostering dialogue that bridges scholarship, ethics, and community. This interview explores the findings of one of Phil’s recent publications, Explaining Asylum Law Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis.

What led you to explore appellate asylum decisions through Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA)?

I’ve long been interested in how legal reasoning intersects with broader social forces. QCA stood out to me because it captures the kind of structured, logic-based thinking that defines judicial decision-making, especially at the appellate level. Traditional statistical methods often gloss over those nuances. With asylum law, where outcomes can mean life or death, I wanted a method that treated each decision with the complexity it deserves—without losing sight of broader causal patterns.

Why did you focus specifically on kinship-based asylum claims for this study?

Kinship claims are both underexamined and politically charged. They sit at the intersection of legal ambiguity and real-world crises, especially for people fleeing non-state violence—gangs, domestic abuse, social collapse. These cases test the boundaries of existing asylum jurisprudence. They also reflect how legal protections adapt—or fail to adapt—to the changing dynamics of global displacement. In that sense, they offered a rich site for analysis.

What does your study reveal about the role of politics in asylum decisions?

Politics plays a role, but it’s often overstated or misunderstood. While political leanings—like state-level voting patterns—did influence how courts interpreted jurisprudence, those factors were not the strongest predictors of final outcomes. The most decisive combination was how each court interpreted the “nexus” between persecution and protected group status, alongside its broader pattern of decision-making. In short, political factors mattered more in shaping how courts read the law than in determining their bottom-line decisions.

Can you explain the significance of the “nexus” criterion in asylum jurisprudence?

Nexus is the legal thread connecting a person’s experience of persecution to a protected ground under asylum law—like race, religion, or membership in a particular social group. In kinship-based claims, courts must decide whether family ties plausibly explain the harm suffered. What the study found is that this nexus determination had more causal power than any other factor, including credibility, past persecution, or political context. That underscores how crucial legal reasoning is—even in an era dominated by politicized narratives.

Your article introduces “CourtPattern” as a variable. What does that capture, and why does it matter?

CourtPattern refers to each appellate court’s general tendency to grant or deny asylum in a larger set of cases. It’s a measure of institutional behavior—like a court’s “personality,” shaped by history, culture, and perhaps informal norms. When combined with the nexus factor, it offered the most robust explanation for decisions. This tells us that courts aren’t just applying law in a vacuum—they’re interpreting it through localized, often durable, interpretive traditions.

How does QCA differ from statistical analysis when applied to legal research?

Statistical models look for probabilities across large datasets and assume random variation. QCA, by contrast, focuses on small, carefully selected populations and identifies logical relationships—combinations of conditions that consistently lead to a particular outcome. That makes QCA ideal for legal case analysis, where each decision is a unique configuration of facts, law, and context. It honors the specificity of each case while revealing patterns across them.

What do your findings suggest about efforts to standardize asylum decisions across courts?

They highlight a serious challenge. Even when jurisprudence is formally uniform, its interpretation varies significantly across courts. Nexus might be the “same” legal standard, but its application is deeply influenced by local court culture. If we want to reduce disparities in asylum outcomes, we need to focus on how legal standards are understood and operationalized—not just who writes them or which administration is in power.

How might your findings inform advocacy or legal reform efforts?

They point to the importance of targeting jurisprudential clarity—especially around nexus determinations. Advocates could push for more precise legal standards and training for judges. There’s also value in highlighting how local court cultures influence outcomes. Reform efforts often focus on broad legislative fixes, but this research suggests that durable change might also come from reshaping institutional norms and interpretive practices.

What are the broader implications of applying QCA to legal studies?

QCA can help us rethink how we understand the law—not as a fixed set of rules, but as a dynamic space where logic, precedent, and institutional culture intersect. It’s especially useful for mapping causal complexity in areas like human rights, environmental law, and administrative rulings. It offers a middle ground between abstraction and empiricism—rich enough for theory, precise enough for policy.

What’s next in your research, and how are you building on this work?

I’m continuing to explore the intersection of law, logic, and local context—both in asylum law and in other domains where legal outcomes diverge across jurisdictions. I’m also developing more accessible content—blog posts, explainer videos—to bring these insights to a wider audience. And I’m looking closely at how QCA can contribute to security studies, particularly in analyzing judicial responses to terrorism and extreme violence. It’s about connecting the dots between how law is reasoned, how it’s lived, and how it can be improved.