Ludmila Bogdan

Ludmila Bogdan

Postdoc

Office hours: Fridays 16:00-17:00 (by phone)

Dr. Ludmila Bogdan is a mixed-method sociologist studying contemporary processes of migration, human trafficking, and social and gender inequality. 

Dr. Bogdan has a Ph.D. in Political Sciences from the University of Vienna and postdoctoral training from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania. She has been a visiting scholar at Max Planck Institute for Religious and Ethnic Diversity and Georgetown University, School of Foreign Service. 

Her research examines the interplay of labor migration, human trafficking, and mass media in Eastern Europe. She relies on empirical data collected from public surveys and interviews with a wide range of constituencies affected by this problem in Eastern Europe: the general public, former and current migrants, victims of human trafficking, imprisoned human traffickers and smugglers, state officials, social assistance workers, the UN officials, the EU officials, and other anti-trafficking experts.

Dr. Bogdan's research project investigates how social status, at the community and individual level, changes and shifts in the context of low-skilled labor migration. Drawing on cultural processes shaping patterns of inequality based on power and resources, she explains how and why people from different status categories react and respond differently to a shift and decrease in their social status abroad. This sociological project builds on the argument that status inequality inherently and distinctively involves material processes and cultural beliefs shared by an “audience” about what and who is worthy of respect and honor.  

During Dr. Bogdan's research, she observed and documented a significant gender difference. Women are less sensitive to a status decrease, are more socially flexible, and are more adaptable to a new status, role, and environment than men. Women of higher status are the most adaptable, and flexible, and have greater control of delayed gratification. When conditions are favorable, high-status women regain and reclaim their high status abroad, which decreases their social and economic inequality abroad.

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