Press release: How do migrants judge inequality?

No. 0 - 23.07.2026

Körber Foundation award for Margherita Cusmano’s PhD thesis

Margherita Cusmano, a social scientist at Göttingen Campus, has been awarded a research prize by the Körber Foundation. She received second prize in the Social Sciences section for her PhD thesis, “How Migrants View Economic Inequality: A Mixed-Methods Study in Germany”. Cusmano completed her PhD at the University of Göttingen and is currently working as a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Political and Social Science. The prize is worth 10,000 euros.

In her PhD research at the University of Göttingen, Cusmano examined how migrants perceive and assess economic inequality in Germany. In doing so, she bridges the gap between migration research and the sociology of inequality, focussing on the interpretation of inequality. Her work contributes to a better understanding of how inequality is perceived by migrant societies. In her research, Cusmano worked with large datasets, employed advanced statistical methods, and combined qualitative and quantitative approaches.

Once a year the Körber Foundation honours outstanding early-career researchers from all disciplines for excellent PhD theses of particular social significance. Information on the German Thesis Award is here: https://koerber-stiftung.de/en/projects/german-thesis-award/

Contact

Margherita Cusmano

Max Planck Institute for Political and Social Science

Inequality, Transformation and Conflict

37073 Göttingen, Germany

Tel: +49 (0)551 4956-134

Email: margherita.cusmano@ips.mpg.de