Mohsin Raza
Mohsin Raza
Mohsin Raza is a Ph.D. candidate in Geography at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, studying migration, displacement, climate adaptation, and disaster recovery in South Asia and the Gulf Arab states. With a background in law and political science, he examines how policy, institutional access, and social inequalities shape mobility and livelihood recovery after environmental and economic disruption.
His dissertation explores how migration pathways shape uneven household recovery from recurrent flooding in Pakistan. His methodological approach integrates big data, spatial analysis, and qualitative research to examine how migration and recovery unfold across places and populations. For example, he combines spatial and survey data with semi-structured interviews to assess how disaster memories, documentation, finances, information, and social networks shape migration aspirations and capabilities, including migration’s opportunities and limits as a climate adaptation strategy.
His broader scholarship connects migration policy and climate adaptation with environmental justice and community resilience. His publications include a chapter in the Handbook of Labour Mobility on temporary labor migration programs in Qatar and South Asia, and articles in the Journal of Conflict Resolution and the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development. In Charlotte, he has contributed to community-based research on food access and urban inequality and to the Climate Inequality CLT Atlas, mapping environmental, health, and socioeconomic conditions across Mecklenburg County.
Mohsin also serves as a research assistant on a National Science Foundation-funded project examining micromobility in disaster scenarios, supporting data cleaning, interview transcription, qualitative coding, and data visualization. At UNC Charlotte, he has twice served as a teaching assistant for Geographic Information Science and Technology (GIS&T) labs and supported instruction in Spatial Thinking. Before beginning graduate study in the United States, he practiced law in Pakistan for six years. This legal experience shaped his approach to migration and disaster recovery, leading him to examine how rights, policies, and institutional barriers influence people’s mobility, access to resources, and capacity to recover.
Advisor: Dr. Michael Ewers
Research Areas:
Migration; Displacement; Climate Adaptation; Disaster Recovery; Environmental Justice; Community Resilience; GIS; Mixed Methods