Mohsen Javdani, PhD

My research examines how inequality, precarity, and exclusion are produced and sustained, and how they might be challenged. Much of it focuses on Canada: how gender, race, and immigration status shape access to secure and well-paid work; how immigration and international education policy decides who is welcomed and on what terms; what drives public attitudes toward immigration; and how homeownership divides Canadians politically.

Alongside this, I study economics itself as a site of power: how ideology, authority, and professional training shape what the discipline treats as credible knowledge, and what a more pluralist economics, open to different values, methods, and ways of understanding, would require.

I work across quantitative and qualitative approaches, from linked employer–employee data, election studies, original surveys, and randomized experiments to in-depth interviews and policy analysis. Whatever the method, the aim is the same: to understand the systems that sustain marginalization, and to make room for more inclusive, plural, and democratic forms of knowledge and social life.

Scholarship

Peer-reviewed publications

Reports and policy briefs

  • Manufacturing Economic Minds: Ideological Bias in Economics EducationRethinking Economics International, February 2026
  • Understanding the Relationship Between Forced and Child Labour Risks and Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining: Consolidating Data and Charting Pathways ForwardWith Genevieve LeBaron, Research Report, International Labour Organization, December 2025
  • Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining as a Means of Preventing and Remediating Forced and Child LabourWith Genevieve LeBaron and Christopher Land-Kazlauskas, Research Brief, International Labour Organization, December 2025
  • Public Attitudes Toward Immigration in Canada: Decreased Support and Increased Political PolarizationWith Mehdi Mohammadian and Maxime Héroux-Legault, The Center for Growth and Opportunity, Utah State University, 2024
  • The Effect of Chinese FDI in BC and Other JurisdictionsPrepared for the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and the BC Ministry of International Trade, February 2014
  • The Effect of the Career Transition Assistance (CTA) Initiative on the Timing of Training Participation and the Duration of TrainingWith Simon Woodcock, prepared for Employment and Social Development Canada, January 2013
  • Immigrants and the Canadian EconomyWith David Jacks and Krishna Pendakur, Metropolis British Columbia Capstone Report, August 2012

Working papers

  • The Housing-Based Cleavage: Property and Political Behaviour in CanadaWith Matthew Polacko (revised and resubmitted)
  • Manufacturing Economic Minds: Source Attribution and the Reproduction of Disciplinary Authority in EconomicsWith Ha-Joon Chang (revision requested)
  • From Moderate to Restrictionist: Political and Identity-Based Drivers of Immigration Attitudes in CanadaWith Mehdi Mohammadian and Maxime Héroux-Legault (under review)
  • Unequal Risks, Unequal Costs: Gender and Precarious Employment in CanadaWith Kendra Strauss (under review)
  • Between Humanitarian Rhetoric and Lived Precarity: Iranian Migrants under Canada’s 2023 Iran PolicyWith Somayeh Zandieh (under review)
  • Colonial Precarity: International Students and the Reconstitution of Canada’s Education–Migration RegimeWith Gloria Lin

Work in progress

  • On Shaky Grounds: Examining the Evolving Landscape of Employment Precarity in BCWith Iglika Ivanova and Kendra Strauss
  • Left on Policy, Mainstream on Method: Gender and the Two Layers of Economic SocializationWith Ha-Joon Chang
  • Governing Precarity: A Genealogy of Canadian Immigration Regimes after WWIIWith Somayeh Zandieh and Kendra Strauss
  • Understanding and Improving Attitudes toward Immigrants in CanadaWith Maxime Héroux-Legault and Adrienne Davidson
  • Disability Income Exclusion and Community Re-entry After Federal Incarceration in British Columbia: A Participatory Action Research StudyWith Iva Cheung and Amanda Butler
  • Advancing Equity in Public Policymaking: A Study of Federal Public ServantsWith Michelle Amri
  • Epistemic Cultures of the Social Sciences: A Full-Text Comparison of Economics, Sociology and Political Science Journals, 1990–2025.
  • Placement Is Not Uptake: The Double Selection of Economics in Policy.
  • Does Annual Market-Value Reassessment Eliminate Assessment Regressivity? Evidence from British Columbia.
Public engagement

Public writing

Media coverage

Interviews

Podcasts

Public talks

  • Who Decides, Who Benefits? Economics, Power, and InequalityWorkshop on pluralist economics, Resource Movement 2026 National Gathering, Vancouver, September 26, 2026
  • Whose Economy, Whose Future? Purpose, Power, and Pluralist AlternativesKeynote address, Pluralist Summer Academy (Netzwerk Plurale Ökonomik), Zeitz, Germany, September 6, 2026
  • Where Does Money Come From? Public Spending, Deficits, and Money CreationProgressive Economics Forum Summer School, May 28, 2026
  • Manufacturing Economic Minds: Ideology, Authority, and Economics EducationRethinking Economics, February 20, 2026
  • Economics for the People: Inside Inequality2026 Bruce and Lis Welch Community Dialogue, February 11, 2026
  • Clocking In for Unpaid LabourPanel discussion hosted by the City of Port Coquitlam, February 5, 2026