Democratic Drain

Justin Gest is the award-winning author of seven books on immigration, democracy, and demographic change, including “Democratic Drain: Global Migration and the Struggle for Democracy” (Cambridge University Press, 2026). He has published a wide variety of peer-reviewed articles on immigration and the politics of demographic change, and he is a founding editor of the Oxford University Press book series, “Oxford Studies in Migration and Citizenship.”

Over the last two decades, Professor Gest has published his reporting or commentary with news publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic, and he served as a columnist for CNN Opinion and Newsweek. From 2010 to 2014, Professor Gest was a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer in Harvard University’s Departments of Government and Sociology.

In 2014 and 2020, Professor Gest received Harvard University’s Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize and George Mason University’s Teaching Excellence Award, respectively each university’s highest award for faculty teaching. In 2013, he received the Star Family Prize for Student Advising, Harvard’s highest award for student advising. From 2007 to 2010, Professor Gest co-founded and served as the co-director of the Migration Studies Unit at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

Professor Gest is a product of Los Angeles Unified School District’s University High School in Los Angeles, CA, where he grew up. He later earned his Bachelor’s degree in Government at Harvard University and his Ph.D. in Government from the LSE.

Marielena Hincapié is a Distinguished Immigration Law and Policy Fellow in Cornell Law School’s Migration and Human Rights Program as well as a New America (ASU Future Security) Fellow, 2026. She was named by Northeastern Law’s Judith Olans Brown Forum for Women in the Law as its Practitioner-in-Residence for 2025-2026.

Marielena served as the executive director of the Los Angeles-based National Immigration Law Center (NILC) and the NILC Immigrant Justice Fund (IJF) until November 2022. She began her tenure at NILC in 2000 as a staff attorney leading the organization’s labor and employment program. During that time, Marielena successfully litigated law reform and impact-litigation cases at the intersection of immigration and employment/labor laws.

Marielena serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of The Management Center, as a member of the General Board of Trustees of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and as a member of the Supervisory Committee of the Finanta Credit Union.

Marielena earned her Juris Doctor degree from Northeastern University School of Law and is a sought-after speaker and media figure. The youngest of ten children, Marielena is from Medellín, Colombia, and grew up in Central Falls, Rhode Island. She is writing a narrative nonfiction book, Becoming America: A Personal History of a Nation’s Immigration Wars (Flatiron Books).